Friday Night Fix It Night
by katecholamine
Summary: After 6 months in Paris, Emily returns to find that the one person she didn't want to leave no longer trusts her. Will Friday Night Fix-It Night repair Emily's relationship with Spencer? And is there any way to fix the love and longing she feels for him?
1. Broken

"Friday Night Fix-It Night," Reid eagerly reminded her, leaning over Emily's plastic cubicle with a huge grin on his face.

She tilted her head upward to stare at the harsh fluorescent lights on the ceiling, briefly closing her black mascara-coated eyes as she groaned, "Reid, I really _wish _you'd stop calling it that."

"Hey, it was your idea," he responded innocently, shrugging his thin shoulders.

"It was most certainly not my idea to call it 'Friday Night Fix-It Night,'" she defended herself, making sarcastic air quotes around the phrase with her fingers.

Reid stepped back from the cubicle and gave her a long wounded look. "Emily?" he said softly over his shoulder as he turned to walk away, "You were the one who pretended to be dead for six months. So I think I've earned the right to call it whatever I want."

Emily cringed. Ouch.

He was right, of course. That was why she'd suggested "Friday Night Fix-It Night" in the first place. Although she knew she needed to work on repairing her relationships with every member of the BAU team, Emily didn't feel the same urgent need to regain their trust and forgiveness, not like she did with Reid.

Then again, she wasn't in love with any of the other members of her team.

Emily couldn't pinpoint the precise moment that her feelings for Reid began or when and how they'd grown so strong, but she did remember the day they became too overwhelming to suppress any longer: the day she'd left her FBI-issued gun and badge on her desk and taken one long, last look at him, trying to memorize every detail of his tousled honey-brown hair, his soft heart-shaped mouth, his sunken hazel eyes, before finally forcing her gaze away and allowing her shaky finger to press the "down" button on the elevator. When the doors closed and her mental image of him was replaced by the polished steel reflection of her tormented and tearful near-black eyes, it took all of the resolve within her not to return back to the office, run into his arms, and hold him close to her, inhaling the light cologne on his neck mixed with that distinctly-Reid scent she secretly loved to breathe deeply into her nostrils whenever he stood nearby. Or to steal one first and last kiss from the pouty lips that transfixed and distracted her whenever he spoke. Or to tell him ... to tell him "I love you and nothing - do you understand me? - _nothing _will ever change that."

Instead, Emily did the only thing she knew how to do. She ran away and spent half a year in Paris, each excruciatingly lonely day filled with endless longing and heartache. Choosing to be relocated to the City of Love without a lover was one way to punish herself for the consequences of her actions.

There were other ways, of course.

Anonymous sex, for example. Men brutally fucking her in dark corners of discothèques, bruising and scraping her back against the wall as she wrapped her legs around them and they pounded into her again and again and again. It was violent and it was rough and it _hurt _and it made her forget, if only for those few short minutes, that there were men who could be gentle or tender or kind during sex. That Spencer would have been gentle and tender and kind during sex.

Or strolling into one of the underground lesbian sex clubs, where confidently voluptuous French women would immediately begin vying to meet her smoldering black-lined eyes the moment she walked through the door. But it was the quiet ones, the ones who sat uncomfortably alone on couches beside women kissing deeply and passionately next to them, the ones who seemed almost frightened when she glided over to them, their anxiety visibly giving way to stunned shock when she murmured brazenly in their ears, "J'ai envie de toi" ... yes, those were the ones she sought out, the ones whose hands she grabbed to lead into the bathroom where, on her knees, she elicited the same sighs and moans she could hear emanating from the other stalls. It never took more than fifteen minutes before Emily's mouth sucking deeply on her chosen partner's clit while encircling it rapidly with her tongue inspired shouts and screams that drowned out all of the other sounds in the room, right up to the very last satisfied shudder. And then she was gone, practically running out of the club to catch a taxi, knowing in advance that she wouldn't be followed. Forgetting for the moment that she didn't have to feel used after sex. That Spencer never would have permitted her to feel used after sex.

And then there were the drugs.

It started when she walked into the ladies room in an art museum, of all places, and unexpectedly witnessed a blonde ponytail draped over a cosmetic mirror on the sink, a finger over one nostril and a hand holding a small straw to the other, sucking up lines of white powder.

Emily stammered an apology and began to fumble with the door when the woman held out the straw, the questioning offer implicit in her gesture. She instinctively shook her head no - after all, cocaine was the drug that had destroyed her childhood friend Matthew's life - and then, pausing, thought: _well, why not? My own life has already been destroyed, after all._

After twenty minutes in the bathroom snorting lines and engaging in cocaine-fueled chatter, Emily and the blonde woman - Mandy - had become fast friends. She, too, was an American transplant, having opted to spend her late father's inheritance on "experiencing the world" instead of attending medical school as planned. Emily - "Leigh," as she called herself - disclosed that she'd left the States to escape an abusive ex-husband.

When Mandy revealed that her father had been murdered the previous year while she slept in the next bedroom after he'd taken her to dinner to celebrate her MCAT scores and that she still, to this day, didn't know who killed him or understand why he was killed when she was allowed to live, the profiler in Emily had to swallow all of the questions she would have asked if she'd been working the case at the BAU and, wiping her nose, reached out to offer Mandy an uncharacteristic hug instead. Uncharacteristic for the carefully controlled and emotionally-removed Emily, at least; maybe not so uncharacteristic for the impulsive and reckless coked-up Leigh.

Day turned into night as Emily followed Mandy (and her seemingly endless supply of cocaine) to a house party where she - where "Leigh" - met a fascinating mixture of well-connected Parisian drug suppliers, bored rich year-abroad students from a multitude of backgrounds and countries, and American transplants like herself and Mandy, each of whom seemed to have their own horror stories to explain their reasons for relocating to France from the States.

By the time the morning light had filtered into the blinds, Emily's entire head was throbbing in tune with her jackhammering heartbeat, her nose entirely numb save for the faucet-like dripping that no amount of sniffling could seem to resolve, and her oily skin, her chapped lips - hell, even her teeth - felt grimy. She'd stopped wanting to do more coke hours earlier and now, taking in all of the red-rimmed eyes and grinding teeth surrounding her, she finally stood up and announced that she had to go back home.

Mandy wrote down her number on the back of an envelope containing two blue-and-red capsules. "Temazepam," she explained. "You'll need it when you get home." Emily doubted it. She'd just done drugs for the first time since she was a teenager and felt so wrecked by the experience that she was pretty damn sure she was going to "just say no" after this.

As she was leaving, one of the clearly high-end dealers who hadn't touched the drug all night pressed a business card into her hand. "J'espère que nous aurons bientôt l'occasion de nous revoir," he murmured in her ear as he receded into the background.

"Ohmygod!" exclaimed Mandy. "Did he just tell you he's looking forward to meeting you again?"

"Uh, yeah," Emily responded, confused. They'd only exchanged a few words all night and the look he'd given her ... it wasn't a look that implied sex or romance or even friendship, but business.

Mandy shrieked, still obviously speeding from the coke, and hugged Emily, jumping up and down. "That's Picasso. Well, his real name's not Picasso. We just call him Picasso because he can do, like, anything. He can get anything you want. Like, seriously?" she broke the hug and her blue-rimmed black pupils stared very seriously into Emily's "I do mean anything. Coke, speed, E, acid, pills, heroin, anything. He's given his card out to a few people here and there but he's totally selective about his clientele. I've been _dying _to get on his contact list for ages now! How did you do it?"

"I - I don't know," Emily responded, mystified.

"Well, we are really gonna par-tay now!" Mandy squealed with delight. "Ohmygod! It's been so long since I've done E ... we should totally roll! It'll be awesome! His shit isn't cut with anything, it's just pure MDMA and ... god, I wanna do it right now!" she chirped.

Emily patted her on the shoulder. "Let me recover from this first and then we'll talk about Ecstasy, OK?"

"Most def," Mandy agreed, leaning in for another impulsive hug. "You're so friendly and huggable and sweet! I'm just glad some guy didn't sweep you off your feet and propose to you before you had a chance to have some _real _fun in this city!" Emily nodded, heading for the door, before blowing back a kiss as she imagined "Leigh" would do.

Friendly? Huggable? Sweet? Emily scoffed at them all for buying into her act, but how much of an act was it, really? Was it the cocaine or the calculated development of a new persona or some aspect of herself she'd forcibly suppressed that made it so easy to become this enigmatic figure her former BAU colleagues would have found entirely unrecognizable? And if they could see her now - riding the Métro in yesterday's sweaty clothing with black dilated eyes and a chemical river running from her nostrils down to her upper lip - what, exactly, would they think of her?

What would _Spencer _think of her?

When Emily returned back to her apartment, she discovered that Mandy was right: she tossed and turned, her body soaking the sheets with sweat, her heart pounding and her mind spinning. She swallowed the two Temazepam capsules without water and fell into a black, dreamless sleep for the next 18 hours.

And that was how Emily had spent the rest of her time in Paris trying to forget Spencer Reid: with the worst of sex and the best of drugs. She tried nearly everything but heroin, firmly shaking her head no when Mandy begged her to ask Picasso to get some. Not after what she'd seen Spencer go through in his battle with pharmaceutical heroin. No way.

So when the day came that Picasso handed her "the usual" eight-ball of cocaine along with a separate baggie containing a stack of blue pills "on the house" and Mandy gasped, "Holy shit! He got Dilaudid!" Emily was probably more shocked than either of them when the words fell out of her red lipsticked mouth: "I want a needle for these."

Picasso had just smirked underneath his black mustache and instructed her to come back tomorrow with the pills so he could find clean syringes, offering to dissolve them himself and then show her how to inject them.

Emily hadn't slept that night. Not because of the coke - her tolerance had increased so dramatically that she no longer needed sedatives to fall asleep afterward - but because she couldn't stop staring at those small round blue tablets, thinking, _so this was what held so much power over you, Spencer? This is what it took for you to forget what had happened to you?_

She wasn't sure herself if she wanted to do it to make herself forget ... or if she wanted to do it so she could, in her own way, feel closer to him.

And then, around 4 a.m., she got the phone call. The one on the FBI-issued cell phone she'd long stopped hoping would ever ring.

"Emily?"

At Hotch's voice - at hearing her real name spoken by Hotch's voice - her legs began to shake so violently she immediately dropped to her knees on the rug covering her living room floor. "Y-yes?" she half-gasped. "Hotch?"

"We got him, Emily. We got Ian Doyle. He's dead. It's safe for you to come back now." He paused, adding carefully, "that is, if you want to."

"But how - who -" she sputtered, her hand flying to her face in disbelief.

"Reid fired the fatal shot. He's under investigation for use of excessive force but - especially if you do decide to return to us - it looks like he'll be cleared. Given the, um," Hotch coughed uncomfortably, "particularly _unusual _circumstances surrounding this case."

The tears that flowed freely from Emily's dark eyes and the gulping sobs caught in her throat rendered her nearly incapable of speech. "How soon?" she managed to choke out. "How soon can I come back?"

"There's a plane waiting for you at Charles de Gaulle as soon as you're ready to leave."

CMCMCMCMCMCM

Emily departed that night with only a small bag containing the clothing she'd originally brought with her to France. She left behind the backless Gucci dresses and the "fuck-me" Versace pumps, the remaining grams of cocaine, the tablets of Dilaudid and Temazepam, and a post-it note for Mandy with the simple words, "Time to move on. Feel free to take anything you want. XOXO, Leigh."

On the plane ride back to DC, Emily could literally feel the drugs leaving her system. She could feel _Leigh _leaving her system. It took only minutes back in her minimalist apartment - where, oddly, all of the lights had been on, almost as though it had been awaiting her return - before the previous six months began to feel like a sordid novel she'd read once, the kind that showed up on those bargain best-seller lists with their one-dimensional characters and poorly-contrived plots.

She was still afraid to touch anything in her apartment, afraid to move anything, almost like it didn't really belong to her, as she waited for a call from Hotch that hadn't yet arrived. But after three days of wearing pajamas from her overhead bag and sitting on the couch eating Chinese while watching A&E marathons of some ridiculous show about criminal profiling, she couldn't stand it anymore and made the call herself.

"I was waiting to hear from you," Hotch intoned, the undercurrent of concern evident in his voice despite his customary austere and business-like manner. "How are you readjusting?"

"Well, if you consider sitting in my pajamas, ordering take-out, and watching some absurd TV show about what we supposedly do for a living to be 'readjusting,' then I'm readjusting just fine," Emily remarked sarcastically. Quickly, before he could respond, she softened her voice and asked, almost pleading, "When can I come back, Hotch?"

"Your timing is impeccable as always," he answered dryly. "We just finished the paperwork on Doyle today and, unless we're called in unexpectedly, I gave the team the weekend off. How does Monday sound to you?"

"Monday's great! Monday's perfect!" she gushed eagerly before straightening her shoulders and adding, in a deferential tone, "I mean, if you believe Monday would be appropriate, sir."

"I'll see you then. You should know, Agent Prentiss, that I have not disclosed the truth about your death to the others. I've decided to leave that up to you. There's some difficult work ahead of you. I hope you'll prove capable of handling it," he warned.

Emily's response was genuine underneath the formalities. "I'm looking forward to it, sir."

"And Prentiss?"

"Yes, sir?"

"It's good to have you back." _Click_.

Ordinarily, Emily would have rolled her dark eyes dramatically at how abruptly Hotch had ended the conversation after his atypical display of sentimentality, but her pink lips just widened into a smile as she envisioned herself walking into the BAU and seeing _(Spencer) _JJ, _(Spencer) _Morgan, _(Spencer) _Rossi, _(Spencer) _Garcia ... Oh, who the fuck was she kidding? The thought of Spencer's face lighting up and the safe, comforting hug he would give her ... It made Monday seem like a lifetime away.

After she had put away the leftover Chinese and turned off the television, Emily headed for her bedroom, yawning. It was only 9 p.m. but she was exhausted. _God, I could really go for a couple of lines right now, _she thought, before shaking her head, her black ponytail swinging back and forth. _No, you could not, _she reminded herself sternly. _Leigh could. And you are _not _Leigh anymore._

Just as she was about to pull back the off-white comforter, she heard something. Keys. Keys jingling in the her door. Instinctively, Emily began to reach for her gun - before remembering that she didn't have a gun anymore. In fact, she realized, she didn't have any weapon readily available other than her kitchen cooking knives - and if she risked running to grab one of those, she also risked coming face-to-face with the intruder before she was able to properly arm herself.

When she heard the front door swing open, Emily slowly and quietly opened one of her white-paneled closet doors, eased herself into the small space and, crouching, slid it closed without making a sound. It wasn't an ideal hiding place, the awkward kneeling already straining her thigh and leg muscles, but with the paneled slabs facing downward to filter in the light from her bedside lamp, she knew that the element of surprise would be an advantage for her if the intruder opened one of the closet doors.

Emily slowed her rapid breathing, straining her eyes as she attempted to see the face of the shadowy figure just ... standing there in her living room. A minute passed. Two minutes. Three. Four minutes.

And then, just when she'd started to wonder whether or not she should jump out of the closet and engage in a surprise attack against the intruder, she heard his voice.

It was Spencer's voice.

Fortunately, he was so caught up in his own world that he didn't even register the audible gasp from inside the closet.

"Emily, I - I might not be coming back here again. Everyone keeps telling me I need to let you rest in peace but I - I knew you wouldn't ... couldn't ... rest in peace while Ian Doyle was still alive." There was a pause and then a succession of deep sobs. "I killed him, Emily. I killed him in cold blood. He'd dropped his weapon and I ... I just kept thinking about this feeling I've had ever since you died, this feeling that you're still out there somewhere, like you're c-caught between this world and the next world and I - I had to kill him if it meant you could finally rest in peace."

Between sobs, Spencer's words bubbled out of him as Emily listened from the closet, tears running down her own pale cheeks. "But I still _feel _you here, Emily. And then I started thinking that maybe I ... Maybe I'm the one keeping you here. Maybe it's my fault you can't rest in peace. I just ... I just love you - I just _loved _you - so much and I never got to say that to you when you were ... when you were alive." When he paused, Emily found herself unable to control her breath anymore and inhaled a deep and ragged sob that resonated throughout the apartment.

"Who - who's there?" Spencer called out anxiously, his footsteps traveling from the living room and into the bedroom. "I'm an FBI agent and -"

Before he could finish his sentence, he swung open the closet door, prompting Emily to raise both of her hands in defense as she stared at the gun pointed directly in her face.

Spencer blinked in surprise before dropping his gun and waving his hands maniacally around his head. "Oh god I'm crazy. I knew it would happen one day; I knew it, I knew it, I'm crazy ..."

"Spencer," Emily said gently, standing and placing a hand on his shoulder. He jumped at her touch. "I'm real, Spencer. You're not crazy. It's me. It's Emily. I'm not dead. I had to pretend to be dead until it was safe for me to come back. But I'm back, Spencer. I'm back because of you. Because of what you did."

Panic flickered in Reid's brown eyes as he stammered, "Oh, god. You know I kill- killed Ian Doyle. I - I could lose my job. I could be charged with murder." His expression changed suddenly and anger filled his face. "This is your fault!" he shouted, backing away from her like she was a poisonous snake. "I never would have done that if I knew - if I had known ..."

"I won't tell anyone," Emily reassured him, moving toward him until his back was against the wall and he had nowhere else to go.

"How do I know that?" he cried out, his eyes rapidly darting back and forth as he considered the possible ramifications of his actions. "How can I ever _trust _you again?"

Emily paused and then reached for his hand. The warmth of his palm against her skin was electrifying and she swallowed hard, suppressing her physical reaction to his touch. "Because I'm going to do everything I can to fix this. And I'm going to tell you about the things I did when I was in Paris for the past six months, things that could get me kicked out of the FBI. I'm going to trust you with that. I'm going to trust you with me. The real me. And I'm going to keep hoping that one day you'll trust me with you, too."

Emily led him to the edge of the bed and patted the area next to her, inviting him to sit down. His gaze hadn't left her since she had started to speak, almost as though he was afraid that if he looked away she would disappear again. So it was under this unflinching stare that Emily disclosed her shameful experiences in Paris, from the anonymous sexual encounters to the cocaine use and experimentation with other drugs to the persona she'd created and how she'd duped genuinely sweet and caring people like her friend Mandy by pretending to be someone else.

When she was finished, Spencer still hadn't spoken.

"Do you trust me now?" Emily asked somewhat desperately, her near-black eyes penetrating his light brown ones. "Did that fix it at all?"

"No," he responded, his Adam's Apple bobbing up and down. "But I want to trust you. I'm just so - I'm so _mad _at you, Emily ... but I'm so glad you're alive that I don't know what I really feel. It's going to take a long time to fix what you did ..."

"I'm fine with that," Emily interrupted, her low voice filled with compassion. "I understand that. So how about this? Every Friday, we'll get together and have dinner or watch movies and talk about all the things we never thought we could talk about before. I'll answer any of your questions, tell you any of my secrets, and hope you'll feel safe enough to do the same. How does that sound?"

Reid thought for a moment before nodding. "Friday Night Fix-It Night," he mused. "I like that idea."

"Well, we don't have to _call it _that ..."

Before she could finish her sentence, Reid grabbed her unexpectedly and held her in a fierce, tight hug, his body pressed against hers, his head on her shoulder and oh god she knew he just wanted comfort but the scent of him in her nostrils and her lips so close to his neck and her breasts against his strong chest made her throb with desire for him and she bit her lip, knowing that she deserved this torture, this exquisite closeness driving her utterly mad with longing ...

When Spencer broke the hug, Emily's arms reluctantly lingered around his back for a moment before he leaned forward to give her a brief kiss on the cheek. "I'll see you at work, then? And I'll see you next week out of work?"

Emily nodded, her face flushing pink at the residual feeling of his soft lips on her skin. When he stood up and walked out the door, locking it behind him, she waited ten seconds to make sure he wasn't going to return before she frantically pulled down her pajama pants and her underwear, roughly fingering her clit as she envisioned Spencer's face buried between her thighs. She came within seconds and moaned out his name as she shuddered violently, over and over again. It was the first orgasm she'd permitted herself in six months.

It was, for her, the official beginning of Friday Night Fix-It Night.


	2. Cracked

After only a few weeks of Friday Night Fix-It Night, Emily found herself opening up to Spencer in ways she'd never imagined she'd be capable of doing with anyone, much less a fellow colleague, revealing truths about herself and about her past that she had previously only described in small generic snippets. Her abortion at age fifteen. Her father abandoning her at age six, never to be heard from again. Her mother's cruel and calculated punishments - sometimes physical, but more often emotional - designed to groom Emily for a lifetime of international politics but ultimately back-firing and leading to her daughter's avowed determination never to pursue a political career or to allow political motivation to influence her work.

Spencer, too, spoke to her about issues he'd never permitted himself to verbalize before: his constant fears about inheriting his mother's schizophrenia, the teasing and bullying he'd endured from grade school until his high school graduation at twelve years old, the loneliness and isolation he'd experienced as one of the top students at CalTech before even reaching puberty, how he used to pray to God as a child to take away his eidetic memory and to lower his IQ so he could just be a normal kid like everyone else.

Their discussions quickly became more personal, more intimate. If, in retrospect, Emily could pinpoint the very moment that the shift occurred, it would be when, sitting on her couch, she hesitantly dared to ask the question she'd been wondering about ever since the night she'd found herself crouching in her closet and listening to Spencer's voice in her apartment. "Why did you come here to talk to me instead of going to my gravestone?"

Spencer dropped his eyes, almost evasively, and with a barely-perceptible toss of his head, allowed his golden brown hair to come untucked from behind his ears, partially covering his face. For once, he didn't smooth the thin strands away as he answered her question with his own. "Have you ever heard of complicated grief?" When Emily paused uncertainly, he followed up: "... otherwise known as Prolonged Grief Disorder?"

"Only vaguely," she responded, trying to remember some of the cases where those phrases had been used. "It's not a part of the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is it?"

"Not yet, but it will be in the upcoming version. Right now, the basic requirements are: 1) a persistent yearning or longing for the deceased; 2) intense sorrow and emotional pain because of the death; 3) preoccupation with the deceased person; and 4) preoccupation with the circumstances of the death." Spencer stopped, momentarily glancing at Emily but only marginally registering the quiver of her lower lip and the shine of tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.

"Since the death," Spencer added, again fixing his eyes on the glass table in front of them, "six of the following symptoms must be experienced on a regular basis: 1) difficulty accepting the death; 2) feeling shocked, stunned or emotionally numb over the loss; 3) difficulty in positive reminiscing about the deceased; 4) bitterness or anger related to the loss; 5) maladaptive appraisals about oneself in relation to the deceased or in relation to the death; 6) excessive avoidance of reminders of the loss; 7) a desire not to live in order to be with the deceased; 8) difficulty trusting other people since the death; 9) feeling alone or detached from other people since the death; 10) feeling that life is meaningless or empty without the deceased or believing that one cannot function without the deceased; 11) confusion about one's role in life or a diminished sense of one's identity since the death; and 12) difficulty or reluctance to pursue interests or to plan for the future since the loss."

Spencer took a deep breath, giving Emily a moment to process his rapid string of words. "Furthermore," he finished, "the grief itself must also cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning and the grief reaction must be out of proportion or inconsistent with cultural or religious norms." After Spencer was finished reciting the criteria in that pressured and matter-of-fact tone he always used when evoking memorized texts, his voice softened and became more - well, more _human _- as he admitted, "So that's - that's what complicated grief is. That's what I have ... I mean, what I had. That's what I had."

Emily's charcoal eyeliner and mascara had started streaming down her porcelain face ever since he'd started to describe, in his own clinical and technical way, how her "death" had affected him as she forced herself to swallow the question she wasn't yet prepared to handle hearing answered - _and which of those twelve symptoms did you have, Spencer?_ - instead opting to return to her original query. "But I don't understand why you came to my apartment to talk to me instead of going to my grave?"

Spencer's head shot up and he stared at her - nearly glared, really - with obvious dismay. "Because I couldn't accept that you were dead, Emily! Because, no matter what the grief counselors kept telling me, I refused to believe that you were gone forever. It was like my brain knew the truth but I wasn't able to _feel _it because if I felt it, it would mean that it was real and it couldn't be real, or - or -" his voice stuck in his throat as he stuttered, "or - or I - I couldn't - couldn't imagine living ... I couldn't imagine living anymore."

Emily flinched. She knew that feeling all too well. Wasn't that, after all, why she had effectively killed any trace of Emily Prentiss when she was in Paris? Why she had fucked and drugged the pain away for half a year? Why - if Hotch hadn't miraculously called at the precise moment he did - she could, at this very moment, be unconscious in some café with a syringe hanging out of her arm instead of staring at Spencer's beautiful face with all of the feminine features and childlike expressions she'd grown to cherish over the years?

Which reminded her of another question. "Spencer," she said gingerly, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it, "what does Dilaudid feel like?"

He looked at her as though he'd been slapped. "What does that ... how is that even possibly relevant to -" he snapped, stunned, forcefully pulling his hand away and standing up. "I think it's time for me to go now, Emily."

"No, wait," she begged as he began to put on his jacket. "I want to know because ... well, because I almost tried it. In Paris. I had the tablets and my dealer was going to show me how to dissolve and inject them the next day. But there was no next day. Hotch called and told me I could come back and I left them behind. I left them behind along with 'Leigh.'"

Reid had stopped struggling with his jacket, its brown corduroy sleeves hanging halfway down his lean arms, an image that Emily would have ordinarily found humorous if not for the gravity of the present situation. He turned to her, his eyes disbelieving, as he uttered an incredulous, _"What?" _Emily flinched, lowering her head shamefully and waiting for his (probably deserved) rage. But his demeanor changed to one of sympathy and concern as he shook the jacket off and sat down next to her, their thighs touching in a way that was making it incredibly difficult for her to concentrate ...

"Why?" Reid wanted to know, his brown eyes filled with worry and compassion."Why, after you'd seen how it almost destroyed me ..."

Emily ignored the electric throbs of desire pulsating through her body, and responded honestly, "Because I wanted to know if it would really make me forget. And I wanted to feel closer to you, even though I was half a world away. And I thought the liquid in that needle would be the closest I'd ever come to being near you again."

Somehow, her intimate confession and the knowledge that she had nearly engaged in a very specific act of self-destruction merely to feel closer to him utterly escaped him, superseded by memories of the trauma preceding his initial forced Dilaudid injection and the all-encompassing addiction that had followed. Remembering ... remembering not only his reasons for using the drug, which Spencer had long become accustomed to speaking about at AA meetings, but remembering for the first time in a very long time what it actually _felt _like to use it ... He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, wiping away the sweat dripping from his forehead even as goosebumps colonized his lanky arms. It felt like Dilaudid withdrawal all over again. It felt like he needed some Dilaudid _now_.

"I have to go," he muttered abruptly, standing up again. "Oh god," Emily suddenly realized, propelling her body off the couch and grabbing onto the cotton of his plaid shirt before he could scamper past her. "I've made you want to do it again, haven't I? By asking you what it feels like?"

Reid hesitated for a moment and then nodded in response, trying to maintain a stern expression - and yet, somehow, he couldn't help the involuntary laughter bubbling out of him at her ardent and determined effort to keep his shirt awkwardly clenched between her fingers, as though her clumsy and feather-light grip could possibly restrain him. "Emily! I'm leaving! Let go of my shirt!"

"You can't leave," she stated simply. "If I have to sit here all weekend with you until the craving's gone, I'll do it. It's 'Friday Night Fix-It Night,' Reid, not 'Friday Night _Fix _Night.'" Unexpectedly, and despite his best efforts, Spencer's golden eyes lit up and the half-smirk on his face turned into a toothy grin.

"You called it 'Friday Night Fix-It Night,'" he gloated, poking Emily in the ribs repeatedly until she couldn't writhe any further away from his jaunty fingertips without freeing the last pinch of cloth from between her fingers. And when she finally gave in, holding her hands up in mock surrender, she realized that she was genuinely smiling for the first time in over six months. The corners of her mouth felt stretched, unnatural. She had entirely forgotten what a real smile felt like.

When Reid stopped jabbing at her, they stood face-to-face in an uncomfortable silence, the teasing rhythm between them dwindling as they locked eyes and, if this had been any other situation, if this had been any other person, Emily knew she'd lean forward and kiss him. She nearly did, until he broke the awkward tension by speaking.

"Emily, there are only two things in this world that have ever made me feel so good but so bad at the same time. Dilaudid and ... and Lila."

A look of utter confusion crossed her face as she tilted her head, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she tried to figure out what one could possibly have to do with the other.

"Because neither was _real_, Emily," he explained, the transient hurt in his eyes evident before he blinked it away, hoping (she was certain) that she hadn't noticed it before it was replaced with a calculated impassivity.

"I mean," he swallowed visibly, "Lila was - is - an actress. And I don't know if what we did in the pool ... if the way we kissed ... if the way she kissed me was movie-kissing or real-kissing."

"Movie-kissing?" Emily interjected, bewildered. And seething inside with jealousy.

"Well," Spencer began hesitantly, "you know how everyone says that kissing in the movies isn't like kissing in real life? How it's all fake? I mean, she's the only girl I've ever kissed. And I don't know if it was real or if it was fake. Like in the movies." Humiliated, he thrust his hands in his pockets, his cheeks reddening and his lips turning down at the corners.

Before she could stop herself, the question tumbled out of her red mouth in a husky, seductive voice that Emily almost didn't recognize as her own. "Do you want me to show you?"

"Wh - what?" Spencer stammered, his body freezing in clear terror.

Emily put her hand on his shoulder, looking up at him from underneath her long lashes. "Do you want me to show you what a real kiss feels like?"

He didn't answer. Couldn't. Just stood there feeling like a high school nerd being invited to the prom by the head cheerleader.

But when she leaned in to press her soft lips against his, she wasn't met with any resistance. And when she stepped forward to press her body against his, the arms that had been helplessly dangling by his sides moved to her lower back, drawing her closer into him.

Emily had never - _never _- been kissed like this before. Every time she opened her mouth, he opened his. Every time her lips briefly closed, his lips would close, too. And when she put her tongue in his mouth, he mimicked every gentle thrust, every slow swirl, even returning her savory sucking of his tongue by immediately mimicking her and doing the same. _This is like a movie kiss, in a way, _Emily thought blissfully, _it's the kind of kiss almost too perfect to be real._

But the wetness soaking Emily's panties ... that was real. And the incredible sensation of Spencer's erection growing harder and harder against her ... that was real, too. His hands cupping her face, his smooth soft lips hungrily pressing against hers, his ragged breaths and rapid heartbeat ... Real, all of it, real.

When Emily stood on her toes to grind against him, making small circles with her hips, he moaned into her mouth and it was better, and meant more to her, than any sound she'd ever heard before.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, Spencer broke the kiss and stepped backward, shaking his head. "We - we can't do this."

"Don't you want me?" Emily whispered seductively, moving closer to him. "Because I want you."

"No - I mean, yes, but ..." he stammered. "But this isn't right. I know what a real kiss is now, thank you very much for showing me. I appreciate your ... your help ... but I really have to go now."

"Spencer, wait!" Emily called after him as he rushed by her and headed for the door. "Don't you think we should at least talk about this? About us?"

"No!" he shouted over his shoulder. "There is no 'this.'"

Before slamming the door behind him, his final vehement words hit her harder than a bullet:

"And Emily? There is no 'us.'"


	3. Fractured

After a fitful night of dreaming about the kiss she'd shared with Spencer, Emily spent all day Saturday curled up on her living room couch in a daze. She couldn't figure out his extreme and polarized reaction, couldn't understand why he had initially kissed her back, clearly enjoying it, only to run away so abruptly ... and while uttering those soul-crushing parting words, no less. _What if, _Emily couldn't help wondering, _what if, by kissing him, I've completely destroyed the growing bond of trust and friendship between us? What if I've lost everything by daring for something more?_

Television didn't assist in distracting her from these thoughts in the least; somehow, she found herself watching _The Bodyguard_, belting out the lyrics along with the soundtrack as tears flowed freely down her cheeks, her voice choking back sobs on phrases like: "Don't make me close one more door / I don't wanna hurt anymore / Stay in my arms if you dare / Or must I imagine you there? / Don't walk away from me / I have nothing if I don't have you."

It was only when her upstairs neighbor began to pound on the floor that Emily realized just how loudly she'd been singing and sobbing. Typically, the other tenants in the building tolerated quite a bit of noise from her apartment, as she often listened to bands like Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine to pump herself up for a case. But apparently half-singing and half-screaming "Head like a hole / Black as your soul / I'd rather die / Than give you control" was more bearable than the cringe-worthy falsetto broken by tearful hiccups on lyrics like "And I will always love you ..."

When the film was over, Emily felt a sense of irrational despondency, wishing she could just pick up the phone and call someone, whining, "But _why _couldn't Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner be together in the end?" Except, of course, if she called anyone from the team asking that question through her tears, they'd immediately suggest she undergo yet another psychiatric evaluation. And it's not like she could call her mother. Hell, her mother probably hadn't even seen _The Bodyguard_. The only person she could honestly think of calling in a situation like this was Mandy.

After all, back in Paris, it was Mandy who had talked her through her first bad acid trip, had hugged her and brought her soup during one particularly brutal post-Ecstasy comedown, and who had listened to her jabber away about everything from her secret appreciation of performance art to her fury over the present global financial crisis. Of course, calling Mandy was simply not possible, not anymore.

And, as she curled into her blue fuzzy blanket, she couldn't help but wonder how much of the "real" Emily had emerged through Leigh and how much of Agent Emily Prentiss was an act. Deciding to wallow in her misery rather than attempt to improve her mood, she changed the channel to the Lifetime Movie Network and poured herself several glasses of wine while watching some generic romantic movie-of-the-week about two star-crossed lovers.

It was too much for her to handle. When Emily had kissed Spencer - and when Spencer had kissed her back - it was like a lifetime of stoic cynicism about love and relationships had instantly unraveled, transforming her from an independent, confident, sensual woman into a pathetically lovesick adolescent.

Drugs. She needed drugs. The wine was only exacerbating her depression and she longed for some Ecstasy to induce the kind of chemical happiness that would subdue these tormented thoughts and feelings.

And then she remembered. The medicine cabinet. Filled with all kinds of prescription drugs she'd taken only on very rare occasions and always for a good reason.

_This is a good reason, _Emily rationalized, unsteadily making her way from the living room to the bathroom and opening the mirrored cabinet without permitting herself to meet the guilty dark brown eyes she knew she'd see staring back at her. It made it easier, somehow, to justify her behavior as she shuffled through aspirin and antibiotics, examining only the bottles stickered with that bright orange "controlled substance" label.

There was Adderall, which was prescribed for all field agents to be used solely during cases when they needed to stave off sleep while remaining mentally alert. But the idea of staying up all night and rearranging her iTunes playlist or scrubbing her kitchen floor didn't really appeal to her. Besides, speed made Emily want to talk incessantly and she could only imagine calling Garcia or JJ and spilling out a torrent of opinions and observations, jumping from one topic to another in the kind of flighty monologue that would lead them to suspect either substance abuse or bipolar mania. And, she hesitantly admitted to herself, she associated coke and speed with Paris. The last thing that Emily wanted to do right now was to obsess nostalgically about a life that was never hers to live in the first place.

Next bottle: Ambien ... No way. The sole time she'd taken one of those was during a case in Montana involving such horrific crime scenes she couldn't stop replaying them in her mind and was desperate to just fall asleep and banish those images from her subconscious. But shortly after taking one of those white tablets, Emily (who was fortunately spared the actual memory of this event) had apparently ordered a pizza, brought it to Hotch's room, and slurred out nonsensical theories about the unsub, one eye half-closed, while consuming the entire pepperoni pizza, each bite dipped in a glass of milk. The ensuing humiliation and nausea upon hearing him describe her behavior the previous night was more than sufficient in her decision to accept complete insomnia rather than ever, ever dare taking another Ambien again.

Diazepam. Emily shuddered involuntarily. Although she'd certainly taken Temazepam and Rohypnol in Paris, she couldn't even look at those little blue pills with the "V" missing from the middle without remembering the rattling pill bottles in her mother's purse as she popped tablet after tablet continuously throughout the day so she could remain cool and remote under the pressure of her high-ranking political position. Cool and remote under the pressure of trying to love her daughter, too. As a teenager, her mother's clear dependence on the pills led Emily to snidely begin referring to her as "Valium of the Dolls" whenever they had a disagreement, which was often. She'd resolved back then that she'd never take one - and she never had.

Emily squinted her eyes, looking at one faded label between her long lashes. Was that ... ? Yes, it was! It was a nearly-full bottle of OxyContin. It had to be at least three or four years old; she remembered that her doctor had prescribed it for an injury she'd sustained in the field after weaker painkillers had proven insufficient. She'd only taken it a few times and thought she'd discarded it long ago since it induced a kind of emotional numbness and apathy that had made it difficult to concentrate on her job. But maybe now emotional numbness and apathy were exactly what she needed in order to concentrate on her job.

The tablets contained 40 milligrams of oxycodone and since she hadn't taken any recreational Vicodin or Percocet since leaving Paris, Emily figured that she should cut one in half to be on the safe side - especially given that she shouldn't even be combining alcohol and painkillers in the first place. It didn't take a DEA agent to know the potential lethality of combining different sedative drugs.

But when she brought the pill into the kitchen and sliced it in half with a knife, barely missing the tip of one of her ragged fingertips, Emily was surprised to find how easily the "OC" coating peeled away from the pressed powder inside. No wonder this formulation had been replaced by a more abuse-resistant version.

_Oh, what the hell? _Emily thought, rapidly crushing the tablet into powder with the knife's edge, _I might as well sniff the whole thing. _She reached into her purse to grab a credit card and a twenty dollar bill and, the ritual instantly returning to her, carefully divided the entire 40 mg pill into evenly-distributed lines. Hesitating for only a moment, she rolled up the bill and snorted all of it in rapid succession, switching nostrils midway as she always did and then tilting her head backward, sniffing deeply to inhale any remaining residue.

As the Oxy began to make its way through her bloodstream, Emily was initially overcome by gut-wrenching nausea. Grabbing her cell phone in case she'd really fucked up this time and needed medical attention, she sprinted to the bathroom in what seemed like slow-motion, barely reaching the toilet before dropping to her knees and vomiting repeatedly, continuing to retch several times even after her stomach had emptied itself.

Normally, she hated throwing up. Had hated it ever since she was a child. On OxyContin, though, the feeling didn't bother her. In fact, when she finally flushed the toilet and wiped her mouth, she felt like she was floating. It was like snuggling into a warm blanket, only the whole world was the blanket. She was the blanket. Thoughts of Spencer filled Emily's mind: memories of their disastrous encounter the previous night, how he'd react if he could see her half-closed eyelids and drooping head as she nodded out on the bathroom floor, whether they would ever resume the close friendship they'd had before she was relocated to Paris or the closer one they'd developed since her return ... But, for the first time since she'd admitted to herself that she was in love with Spencer, Emily just didn't care. About any of it. About all of it.

She didn't care that this was precisely the reason she had stayed away from strong opiate drugs, pharmaceutical or otherwise, while in France. She didn't care that her earlier determination to limit herself to small doses of lower-potency prescription painkillers was because she was afraid that she'd disengage completely from the world, from life, from herself. Because right now, easing herself down onto the bathroom tile so she could close her eyes and rest for just a minute, those fears didn't seem important anymore. Actually, they felt more like goals; goals she'd manage to accomplish merely by snorting just one small yellow pill. It was so easy. It was too easy. Why hadn't she realized it before now?

Her eyes closed as her body continued to float around her, and she fell into a dreamy half-sleep within moments, her black hair splayed over the bathroom tile and her fingers relaxing their grip on her cell phone as she murmured various nonsensical phrases in a slurred, slowed tone of voice.

Emily felt wonderful.

CMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCM

Emily felt horrible.

It was about 6:00 a.m. when she opened her eyes, the fuzzy features of her bathroom drifting in and out of focus. Her head was throbbing, her back was aching from sleeping on the cold tile floor, and her stomach was definitely threatening her with an uneasy sense of nausea.

Just when Emily managed to stand up on her shaky legs, she glimpsed herself in the mirror and was horrified by the cartoonish way her hair stood up against one side of her head, dismayed by her crusted eyes with their pinpricked pupils, disgusted by the traces of vomit smeared across her cheek, completely shocked by this stranger she saw staring back at her. This was not the face she was accustomed to seeing upon waking up.

In the past, her lovers had frequently accused her of arising early to adjust her appearance, refusing to believe that anyone could fall asleep and awaken looking like Elizabeth Taylor in her heyday. She herself didn't quite understand why or how sleep didn't diminish her mystique but rather contributed to it, although she certainly knew better than to question it after all these years. In the beginning, it always surprised her that the man or woman she'd spent the night with would essentially beg her to permit them to bury their face between her legs, frantically licking and sucking her to a rapid and intense morning climax. Now, though? Well, now she just expected it.

Of course, Emily hadn't had a real lover in quite awhile. And she had stopped expecting anything from anyone for some time. Stopped believing that she deserved anything from anyone, either. Maybe the woman in the mirror was a reflection of the person she'd always been on the inside. Maybe this image finally matched the cruel and shameful reality hidden underneath her dishonestly enticing exterior. Emily had never hated herself before but at that moment she couldn't help wondering if maybe that was only because she had never actually _been _herself before.

Her ears began to buzz. No, the bathroom began to buzz. What the ... ? It took a moment for her to remember her cell phone beneath her feet as she reached down for it, suppressing the gagging nausea flowing through her.

It was Hotch. What the fuck was Hotch doing calling her on a Sunday?

Praying that this phone call didn't involve her clear violation of FBI fraternization rules with Spencer, she managed to take a deep breath before answering in her competent, professional tone: "Prentiss."

"I need you to come into the office," Hotch ordered.

"What? But it- it's Sunday morning. Why?" Emily tried to prevent any trace of the rising sense of panic she felt throughout her body from invading her voice.

"We have a case. It's urgent."

She nearly sighed with relief. "I'll be there as soon as I can, sir."

After showering, brushing her teeth, and applying makeup, Emily no longer felt like the disgusting monster of earlier but she didn't exactly feel like herself, either.

Whatever _that _meant.

She wondered if it was some kind of sign when the first person she saw upon she walking into the BAU headquarters was Spencer, standing at the coffee counter and pouring himself a cup. Despite herself, Emily's heart soared as she walked toward him. His tousled brown hair and perfect side profile, lips pouted and brow furrowed in concentration, mesmerized her. She watched silently as he dumped his typical five spoonfuls of sugar into the hot beverage and grabbed a straw and to stir it with his long quick fingers.

She didn't realize how intently she'd been staring at him until he turned to her and asked coldly, "what do you want, Emily?"

"I- I want to talk about Friday night," she said in a low hushed tone, glancing around to make sure no one had heard.

"There's nothing to talk about," he insisted, gulping his coffee. "Oh, unless you want me to _repay _you for the _favor _you did for me? I suppose I can show you how to shoot up Dilaudid, since I have so much more _experience _than you. Of course, I'd warn you in advance that anything you feel isn't going to be _real _and that - and that I'd just be _using _you because I didn't want to feel alone."

With each emphasized word, Emily flinched as though she'd been struck. "Is that what you think?" she finally hissed. "That I was doing you a favor? That I was using you?"

"Well, weren't you?" he snapped.

She paused. OK, technically, she had kissed him under the pretense of showing him what a "real kiss" felt like. And yes, technically, she was using the opportunity to try and seduce him into falling in love with her.

"I did want to kiss you, Reid," Emily responded, her pleading eyes searching his. "I wouldn't have offered if I didn't want to."

"And you also wanted to know what it felt like inject Dilaudid, Emily," he reminded her, taking another gulp of coffee. "But I never would have shown you what that felt like. A real friend would understand that sometimes it's better not to know."

He walked away, leaving Emily mystified. What did he mean when he implied that it would have been better not to know? Not to know what?

She needed advice. Badly. But who ... ?

At that moment, Garcia came bopping into the office, gently hitting Emily on the nose with the fluffy pink pen she was carrying in her left hand. "And just how is my favorite raven-haired Snow White today? Did Hotch call you away from a salacious weekend with your Prince Charming?"

She was joking, of course. But if Emily was going to confide in anyone ... Well, Penelope Garcia held more secrets about the personal lives of her fellow team members than the Pentagon held about the JFK assassination.

"I have to talk to you," Emily whispered urgently.

Garcia's eyes widened in delight behind her glasses as she squealed, "So there _is _a Prince Charming!"

"Shhh! No! I mean, yes. I mean, I don't know," Emily sputtered.

"Oh, hon," Garcia replied, genuine concern in her voice, as she rested her right hand on Emily's upper arm. "It sounds like you're in need of a little ladies' room therapy session. Shall we?"

Emily nodded gratefully, nearly running to catch up with the bright orange-clad figure gliding across the bullpen with determination. "Oh no," Penelope groaned in dismay when they reached the locker room. "Maintenance."

"You know, it's OK," Emily assured her. "It's fine. Really. I can handle it."

Garcia clucked dismissively. "Not so fast, my pretty young thing. The last time you said 'I can handle it,' I ended up crying my eyes out at your funeral."

Before Emily could protest, Garcia burst into the adjacent male locker room, calling out, "Anyone in here?" Her heels clicked on the floor as she passed by the empty changing area and turned the corner, peeking her head under each of the toilet stalls, her barrette-adorned bleach blonde hair nearly touching the floor. "Come on, Em! We're good!" she shouted back at the agent, whose hand rested hesitantly on the door.

"You know, you really could have _waited _for an answer before barging in ..." Emily scolded, entering the locker room and carefully closing the door behind her.

"And miss a chance to feast my eyes on a shirtless Derek Morgan?" Garcia placed a hand over her heart with an exaggerated sigh. "I think not, my dear one."

There was a slight uncomfortable pause between them. Emily wasn't quite sure how to begin so she started biting her cuticles anxiously.

"Oh, babycakes," Garcia remarked sympathetically.

"What?" Emily asked, immediately defensive. She hadn't even said anything yet.

"It doesn't take a profiler to know that when a certain Ms. Emily Prentiss begins to gnaw at her fingers like a squirrel with rabies, something big's going on. Now dish."

Hearing her nervous habit described as a "squirrel with rabies" prompted an unexpected laugh before Emily's heart-shaped mouth twitched visibly and her eyes rested on her shuffling black boots. In one connected stream of words, she blurted out, "On - Friday - night - I - kissed - Spencer - and - he - freaked - out - and - left - and - now - he - won't - talk - to - me."

When she looked up from under her thick black eyelashes, biting her lower lip, Garcia (for perhaps the first time since Emily had known her) seemed speechless. Her pink-lipsticked mouth opened and closed like an underwater guppy and, after blinking her eyes and twitching her head several times, finally seemed able to process the information she'd just heard. "You kissed Spencer," she repeated.

"Yes."

"Spencer. As in, our Spencer? As in, Spencer Reid? As in, boy genius twenty-nine year old virgin Spencer Reid?"

"Yes," Emily admitted morosely.

"How on God's green earth did _that _happen?" Garcia asked, still clearly shocked by her colleague's confession.

"Well, here's the thing," Emily confided, swallowing hard. "I- I've been in love with him for a while. Before I went to Paris. I know it's crazy. I know it's so completely crazy that even I don't understand it." She tilted her head upward, looking at the ceiling, to prevent the tears shimmering in her eyes from falling down her cheeks. "So when I came back and he just ... _hated _me so much for what I'd done, for faking my death and relocating to Paris ... I had to fix it. He doesn't know this - no one knows this - but I thought about him constantly when I was there and I did all kinds of things just to try and make myself forget him, to try and make myself stop loving him. But to tell you the truth? I think it was easier being so far away and not being able to see him at all than being so close to him and wanting more than he can give me." Emily stopped suddenly, lost in her thoughts.

"So the kiss ..." Garcia reminded her, mercifully refraining from commenting on the unexpected news that her friend was hopelessly in love with Spencer.

"Right." Emily shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to betray Reid's confidence. "Um, well, do you know anything about Spencer's ... history ... with women?"

Garcia chuckled. "Honey, he has no history with women. Other than that blonde actress with whom," she lowered her voice dramatically, "he shared some verrrrrry intimate moments with in a pool before you'd joined the BAU. We all knew it didn't mean anything to her but apparently it meant the world to him. He even asked me to restore the negatives for him, poor thing."

Emily was overjoyed - not only because Garcia already knew about Reid's sole encounter with Lila but also (selfishly) because his suspicions had been true after all: it hadn't been a "real" kiss they'd shared. She continued, trying to suppress the relief in her voice. "Right. So on Friday he told me that he didn't know if his kiss with Lila was a 'movie kiss' or a 'real kiss.'"

"Movie kiss," Garcia interjected, popping a piece of bubblegum into her mouth. "Movie kiss for sure."

"And then ... and then I asked him if he wanted to find out. If he wanted me to kiss him so he'd know whether or not it was real." Emily's face reddened. "He didn't respond so I ... so I just did it. I kissed him."

"And?" Garcia prompted, her eyes lighting up.

"And it was amazing," Emily sighed, her body tingling at the memory. "It was ... it was perfect. And he enjoyed it. That's what I don't understand. I could _feel _that he enjoyed it. But when I ..." she cringed, slightly embarrassed, "when I started to ... um ... press myself against his ... his _enjoyment _..."

"His hard-on," Garcia offered bluntly, snapping her gum.

"Yeah. When I started to do that, he just freaked out and thanked me for showing him what a real kiss feels like. And I begged him not to leave so we could talk about this and talk about us, he said 'there is no this and there is no us' and left. And then this morning when I got here I tried to talk to him about it again and he said the strangest thing. First, he accused me of using him and then he said ... he said that 'a real friend would understand that sometimes it's better not to know.'" Emily paused, still trying to process that last statement. "I just ... I don't know what I did that was so awful and I can't _tell _him I'm in love with him and I can't figure out what he meant about it being better not to know and I wish I could get in a time machine and undo Friday night because those ten minutes of kissing him -"

"Ten _minutes?"_ Garcia exclaimed. "Girl, you didn't just kiss our good doctor. You totally made out with him!"

Emily blushed scarlet as Garcia's excitement faded and she tapped her pink pen thoughtfully against her lips. "You know what I think, Emily? I think Reid's clung to the belief that Lila really wanted him for so long that, by kissing him, you shattered the much-cherished memory of his solitary encounter with the fairer sex. Poor boy, just think of the pain he must feel now that he's realized he's never even had a chance at love ..."

"But he did! He does!" Emily interrupted suddenly, cutting Garcia's melancholy monologue short. "He has a chance with me!"

"That may be true, babydoll," Garcia pronounced knowingly, swinging open the door and leading Emily toward the briefing room so they wouldn't be late for this rare emergency case presentation, "but the question is: does _Reid _know it's true?"

After they were gone and the locker room was silent, Reid stepped down from the toilet on which he'd been crouching ever since Garcia had unexpectedly stormed in.

Emily couldn't have possibly been aware of the fact that if he hadn't known it was true before, he most certainly knew now.


	4. Splintered

"This better be good," Derek Morgan complained, emphatically shaking his head back and forth. "I left three fine young ladies behind on a Sunday morning for this shit. Right in the middle of breakfast in bed. And you _know _what was on the menu."

"Oh god, Morgan," Emily groaned, closing her eyes momentarily to block out his flirtatious wink and Cheshire Cat grin before she dramatically stage-whispered across the table, "You know, you can always hit the 'play' button again when you get home."

"You can hit my play button any day of the week, beautiful," Morgan retorted smoothly, ignoring her petty jab at him, as Hotch and JJ walked into the room, Reid trailing slightly behind. "And, while we're on the subject, if pretty boy over here gets his own 'Friday Night Fix-It Night' with you, then I think I should get a night, too."

Emily's sarcastic smile froze momentarily, the panicked micro-expression that crossed her face imperceptible to everyone but Reid, who had taken the empty seat next to her and was watching her closely. Quickly, she flipped her black hair behind her shoulder and, with an exaggerated pout of her red lips, shrugged in faux-innocence. "Sorry, Morgan, but my nights are all filled up. Garcia's got 'Wednesday Night World of Witchcraft Night' -"

"World of _Warcraft_," Penelope interrupted in mock offense.

"Sorry." Emily held her hand up apologetically. "'World of Warcraft Night'. Hotch and I have 'Saturday Night Salsa Dancing Night' ..." She paused, waiting for the team's inevitable laughter at the image of their stoic, businesslike supervisor trying to salsa dance, continuing, "Rossi and I have ... Let's see. We have 'Spend-It-All Sunday Night' where he lets me spend all of his money ..."

"Yeah, right!" Morgan hooted as Rossi smiled in that good-natured way of his at Emily, his kind eyes filled with wisdom and understanding. "This guy will drop a grand on a pair of shoes but when I asked him to borrow a dollar last week for the vending machine he asked me when I could pay him back!" The team roared upon hearing yet another anecdote illustrating Rossi's infamous reputation as a tight-wad despite the wealth he'd accumulated from book sales and speaking fees.

"Oh, and of course ... How could I forget JJ?" Emily stopped dramatically as her colleagues - even Hotch - seemed to await her next joking characterization, which had already served to relieve the palpable resentment at being called into the office abruptly on a Sunday morning. "Well, that should be obvious. 'Monday Night Make-Out Night'." She blew an exaggerated kiss toward JJ, who shook her blonde hair wildly, pursed her light pink lips, and blew one back.

The team clapped appreciatively. Well, most of the team, anyway. Spencer fixed his eyes on the side of Emily's face and when she turned to glance at him, praying he hadn't been offended, he stared back at her - not in the angry, challenging way she'd expected, though. There was something almost ... _soft _about the look in his hazel eyes ... something she couldn't quite describe ...

"Tuesday and Thursday," Morgan prompted.

"I- I'm sorry?" Emily asked, tearing her searching eyes away from Reid's to focus on Morgan' expectant gaze emanating from across the table.

"All of your days aren't taken. You've still got Tuesday and Thursday. So what'll it be, Princess?"

"Oh," she said quietly, looking down into her lap. "Already taken. 'Therapy Tuesday' and 'Therapy Thursday'. Where, on the government's money, I get to spend an hour trying to prove that I'm still fit to work at this job. I'm sure the taxpayers would be thrilled."

Despite Emily's self-depricating sarcasm, a heavy silence hung over the room as they all remembered why she'd initiated Friday Night Fix-It Night with Reid in the first place. It was the same reason the Bureau had insisted upon her ongoing mandatory psychological evaluations: so she could prove herself trustworthy to the very people who didn't believe she was worthy of their trust.

"So you're all probably wondering what could be so important that it couldn't wait until Monday." Hotch finally spoke, clearing his throat and breaking the tension.

Everyone glanced around the table, nodding uneasily.

"Do you know what the MCATs are?" Hotch asked.

"Yeah, the Medical College Admissions Exam. They're like the SATs for medical school. Only about a million times harder," said Rossi.

"But they're even more important than the SATs. An applicant's MCAT scores can make or break the admission into medical school, regardless of undergraduate GPA," Spencer added. "An acceptable score is usually anything above 24, with the top medical schools often looking for a score above 37. The highest possible score is a 45, but it's designed to be unachievable, so very few people have ever gotten a perfect score in the entire history of the test."

"Let me guess ... " Emily muttered to herself.

"Yes, I am one of the only people in history who received a perfect score on the MCATs." The affective disconnect in Reid's matter-of-fact statements about himself never ceased to startle Emily, even after all this time. There should have been a trace of bragging or even a hint of false modesty in his voice but there was none of that. His admission was devoid of the type of pride or excitement that most people would convey if they'd been one among only a handful of people to score perfectly on one of the most challenging standardized tests in existence.

_Lila Archer was, for Spencer, what a perfect MCAT score would be for anyone else, _Emily suddenly realized. _Something he thought was impossible and yet still managed to attain. Finding out it wasn't real must have been like a medical school hopeful with a perfect MCAT score finding out that there had been a mistake and that the exam had been rigged somehow. _Her heart sank. In one night, she'd managed to destroy the only "achievement" that had ever really mattered to him. How could she have been so naïve? How could she have been so selfish in trying to make him fall in love with her that she'd single-handedly destroyed the only illusion of love he'd ever known?

"Reid, how many test-takers will receive scores equal to or above ... let's say, 37? Or 40?" Hotch questioned.

"75,801 people take the MCATs annually. Since the test is offered 22 times yearly, that means that about 3,446 will take the test on any given testing day," Reid recited, his brown eyes skimming the air back and forth, almost like he was reading an invisible page in front of him. "Each year, 1% of all MCAT test takers, or about 758 people, will score 37 or above and 0.2%, or about 152 people, will score 40 or above."

"That's more than I would have thought," Morgan remarked, surprised.

"Well, not really," Reid responded, his fingers moving rhythmically against the side of his chair. "The results aren't only compared to yearly statistics but also to the test scores of other medical school applicants on that particular exam date. So every time the test is administered, only 35 people will score a 37 or above and only 7 people will score a 40 or above."

"What's this about, Hotch?" Emily finally asked, her head throbbing from either the statistics being thrown around or from the aftermath of last night's OxyContin. Probably both. "Why were we called in on a Sunday morning to hear about the statistical breakdown of MCAT scores? Does the Bureau want us all to pursue degrees in medicine?"

"Over the past six months, there have been a series of murders connected to the MCATs in and around the New York City area," JJ informed them, passing around the brown case folders. "All victims were widowed or divorced fathers and all survivors were only children - daughters, to be precise - who scored in the top 1% on the MCATs. Home invasions, no sign of forced entry, death by throat-slashing. The victims bled out immediately. All were found the next morning by their daughters. Since the MCAT scores are released 30 to 35 days after the test has been taken and can only be obtained by logging onto the official website, there's a good chance that this unsub is either highly skilled with computers or actually works in some capacity for the examination board. The last four MCAT testing dates resulted in two or three murders, approximately a month after the test had been taken. The first murder involved only one victim. We believe that the surviving daughter of this murder, which took place in the suburban Westchester Village of Scarsdale, holds the most important information about the motive and maybe even the identity of the unsub, although she probably doesn't know it herself."

Emily felt chills sweep through her body and visibly shivered. She remembered that first coked-up encounter with Mandy in Paris and the story about finding her father murdered the morning after they'd gone out to celebrate her MCAT score over dinner. But Mandy ... well, Mandy didn't exactly seem like "top 1%" material. Of course, "Leigh" never would have been mistaken for an FBI agent, either.

"Have we been able to contact the first survivor for questioning?" Emily asked, her voice wavering.

"No," Hotch said. "She decided not to go to medical school and disappeared to Paris. It has proven nearly impossible to track her down; she inherited a large fortune from her father and this has bought her either protection from the police or protection from a gang feared by the police. She does not live at the apartment listed on her initial travel visa, which expired months ago, but she appears on no watch list despite continuing to stay there without a visa and without citizenship."

Her passport photo and information appeared on the screen in front of them. Amanda Bernard.

Mandy.

It was an old photo, taken years earlier, and Emily had to bite the inside of her cheeks to hold back the tears as she stared at the image, the image that was both Mandy and yet not-Mandy. The features were the same, but there was a sense of innocence and happiness in those large blue eyes that had been permanently destroyed by the time Emily walked into that museum bathroom and into Mandy's life. _Why did this happen to you, of all people, Mandy? _Emily couldn't help wondering. _Why would anyone want to steal that lightness on your face and replace it with the permanent darkness I witnessed in you?_

Hotch's severe tone interrupted her thoughts. "Prentiss and Reid, you're going to Paris to try and find Amanda while the rest of us fly to New York to work on creating a profile based on available victimology. The most recent MCAT was offered three weeks ago, which means we have only seven to twelve days before the unsub strikes again. And, while I understand that it may be ..." he trailed off, helplessly raising his arms and the air and dropping them against his dark blue suit, "it may be difficult for you to return to Paris, Agent Prentiss, you're the only member of the team who speaks fluent French and has gained a ... a familiarity with the area and the local culture."

"Why does Reid have to come?" Emily demanded defensively. "I can do it on my own."

Hotch stood silent for a long moment before responding.

"Because, Emily, I don't want you to remember who you were at the expense of forgetting who you are. If anyone can prevent that from happening, it's Reid."

Emily swallowed thickly and glanced over at Spencer, fearing that she'd see resentment and dread on his face. But when she met his sunken eyes, he smiled - a genuine smile, not the forced "don't worry, I'll play along" smile she would have expected from him - and reached out to pat her leg reassuringly.

"I've never been to Paris," he announced happily to the team. When he turned back to face Emily's bewildered expression, he ran two fingers slowly (almost ... suggestively?) over his lower lip, his hand no longer patting her leg underneath the table but _stroking _it, as he moved forward in his chair to whisper in her ear, "I hope we'll have time for you to show me things I've never had a chance to experience before."

Fortunately, the rest of the team had diverted their attention to the logistics of the case and were spared Emily's dazed confusion as her disbelieving eyes followed the light movements of Spencer's fingers on her thigh and her mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came out.

_What the fuck is he doing? _she wondered, as his secretive erotic thigh-stroking underneath the table caused her to, despite her best efforts, breathe more rapidly and spread her legs wider on the chair beneath her, the familiar slick dampness in her underwear increasing with each gentle caress. _Is this how he's planning on getting back at me? Because this ... this torture by desire ... oh god, this is so much worse than his indifferent manner or his cruel remarks earlier._

"I- I need to stop by my apartment, sir," Emily stammered as Hotch ordered the team to gather their pre-packed flight bags. "My passport is locked in a safe in my bedroom. I had no idea this would be an international case."

It was a lie, of course. Her travel bag had always contained her FBI passport, but given the recent threat to her security as "Agent Emily Prentiss," it was a believable one. What she did need - that bottle of OxyContin - seemed, to her, to be equally as crucial for this trip as her documentation papers.

"Fine," he agreed. "We'll be taking the BAU plane from Quantico, anyway; at present, the active use of U.S. government aircraft with international capacity has been frozen due to the recent tension in the Middle East."

"Wait, but doesn't that include the BAU plane?" Reid interjected, puzzled. "We're capable of overseas travel."

"That fact was, somehow, _overlooked _during the audit," Hotch replied, frowning.

"Garcia," Emily and Reid realized simultaneously.

Hotch held up his hand, suppressing the half-smile twitching at the left corner of his mouth. "I don't know how it was overlooked, nor do I want to know. But I will say that finding secure transportation was certainly more of a ... challenge than usual. The only solution was to charter a private luxury jet out of Dulles."

Emily stiffened visibly. "Sir, I've been on those types of jets before. With my mother. I'm not sure if I feel comfortable taking advantage of so many unnecessary amenities while working a case."

"I'm grateful for your concern, Agent Prentiss, but this won't be quite the same as flying on the Ambassador jets. The only one available on such short notice belongs to a ... a personal friend of the President and the Bureau. And, to minimize costs, we've declined the individualized catering and massage services, although you will have access to a stocked refrigerator, a microwave oven, an espresso machine and - although I'm sure I don't need to advise either of you against using it - a wine bar." Emily nodded, thinking, _go ahead and advise all you want, Hotch; that wine bar is going to become my new best friend on this plane ride._

"The cabin itself is also different than what you may have been accustomed to in the past: it contains a full-sized bathroom, a small chair for Internet use, and a large bed, so while you will certainly be comfortable, you won't be pampered."

"_A_ bed?" Emily exclaimed, her eyes widening in surprise. "As in, one?"

"Perhaps now you'll appreciate why I decided to send Reid along with you instead of Morgan," Hotch replied, only half-kidding.

"'Appreciate' is not quite the word for it, sir," she responded through gritted teeth as he turned to make his way toward the team awaiting his presence on the plane to give the 'wheels up' command.

Emily turned to look at Spencer, the apology implicit on her face. "I'm so sorry -" she started to say before he stopped her.

"I'm not," he shrugged casually. "I'm actually looking forward to it. Besides, we can spend a few days in Paris to prevent the rest of the team from trying to figure out how you were able to locate Mandy in about ten minutes."

Emily blinked, stunned. So he'd already connected her description of Mandy with the Amanda Bernard they had been sent to find. Then again, she considered, it was only her own self-protective denial that prevented her from knowing instantly that he would make the connection between the two. The details that Emily had provided about why Mandy had decided to travel to Paris rather than attend medical school hadn't escaped his profiling instinct, either.

"And," Spencer added carefully, "I think my presence will help her mourn you."

"_Mourn _me? But I'm right here! If she's been mourning me since I left ..."

"She hasn't been mourning you, Emily. She's been mourning Leigh. Just imagine what it's going to feel like when she finds out that the person she trusted - quite possibly the _only _person she trusted since her father was murdered - never really existed at all." There was an undertone of anger in his voice that Emily was afraid to confront, understanding intuitively that she - she, who had lied and manipulated and caused so much pain to so many people she truly cared about - didn't have the right to confront.

Instead, glancing down at Reid's twitching fingers ... the fingers that had, not ten minutes earlier, been teasing her thigh and rendering her almost incapable of concentrating on anything but those long sure fingertips and the magic trick they'd been performing on her body ... Emily insisted, in a voice intended to come out as solid and firm but emerged as a whiny plea instead, "Spencer, I know what you said earlier, but I really think we're going to need to talk about Friday."

She was taken aback when he bobbed his head up and down in agreement, wanting so badly to believe that all had been forgiven, but her instinct warned her to be suspicious of the 180-degree turnaround in his behavior from earlier that morning. It was almost like the sensation she felt when first learning how to play chess, the constant reminder that if she failed to see two moves ahead of the other player, she would lose the game.

On their silent drive to Emily's apartment prior to departing for France, Emily kept trying (and failing) to imagine what Spencer's next move might be, what he could possibly be planning. She was certain of one thing, though: whatever it was, she was not going to like it.

Meanwhile, Spencer stared out the window of the passenger seat, considering each and every move he planned to make ... and fantasizing about just how much Emily was going to like it.


	5. Stitched

Neither Emily nor Spencer had spoken a word to one another since leaving the BAU headquarters.

Their facial expressions, it seemed, were sufficient enough to communicate their thoughts and feelings.

For example, Spencer's raised, inquisitive eyebrows when Emily grabbed her "go bag" out of the backseat of the SUV so she could run up to her apartment and carefully hide the bottles of Adderall, Ambien, Valium, and OxyContin underneath her clothes. Or her troubled, guilty face sneaking glances over to the passenger's side when she stopped at a red light on the way to the airport. Or Spencer's strong jaw dropping and Emily's long-lashed eyes widening unexpectedly upon seeing first-hand what could only be described as a hotel suite in the sky.

And now, though both kept their gazes fixed in front of them as they awkwardly sat with their backs upright on the cream-colored comforter of the luxury cabin's large bed in an obvious state of hypervigilance that neither was willing to articulate, it didn't require verbal or even visual confirmation to sense the unacknowledged discomfort hanging heavily in the air between them.

Shortly after takeoff, however, Emily, discovered that she was no longer concerned in the least with what Spencer might be thinking. Because, less than half an hour into the flight, her mind was tormented by one solitary and relentless idea: _I need some OxyContin. Now._

When she finally mustered up the courage to turn to him and announce that she needed to use the bathroom, perfectly willing to lose the childish "silence game" they'd been playing, she was shocked when Spencer stared directly into her clouded black eyes with his own deep-set brown ones and casually inquired, "So what drug are you using now, Emily?"

His tone wasn't accusatory or angry, but she responded with righteous indignation anyway. Her back straightened and her eyes blinked rapidly, but Emily didn't pause for a moment before instinctively snapping, "What the fuck are you _talking _about, Reid?"

He reached out a hand to stroke her smooth cheek in an apparent gesture of comfort, but when Emily recoiled as though he'd struck her, Reid began to speak in a matter-of-fact tone, his eyes searching hers for a reaction. Or a confirmation. "Your eyes are naturally more dilated than the average person and yet this morning your pupils were the size of pin-pricks. You've consumed less than half of your normal daily coffee intake, which is either the result of nausea or anxiety, both of which are common withdrawal symptoms," Reid checked off each fact on his long piano fingers as Emily bit down on the inside of her cheeks, refusing to betray the expressionless mask plastered on her face. "I can feel you alternating between sweating and shivering next to me and, ever since we left your apartment, you've been stealing glances at your bag like you're trying to smuggle an ounce of heroin overseas. Is that what it is, Emily? Is it heroin?"

"How _dare _you?" she hissed at him, narrowing her eyes. "How dare you assume that everyone else is a junkie just because you are?"

"Then tell me I'm wrong," he implored, grabbing her thin wrists with his strong arms as she struggled to break free of his grip, grab the fucking bag, run into the bathroom, and snort her way - hell, at this point she'd even be satisfied with _chewing _the damn things - into a state of careless oblivion. "Tell me I'm wrong about the drugs and I won't ever ask you again."

Emily almost lied to him, the words "you're wrong" dancing on the tip of her tongue ... but when she raised her head and looked deep into Spencer's boyish face, a face filled with so much hope, a face that so badly _wanted _her to reassure him that he was wrong ... she couldn't do it. She couldn't lie to him. Even though the possibility of repairing their relationship felt so far away while the promise of pharmaceutical oblivion was so close she could literally reach out and touch it, she still couldn't force the words out of her mouth.

Instead, she collapsed entirely. Her competent and put-together facade collapsed. Her defensive justifications about the true motives behind her drug use collapsed. Her denial about the severity of her behavior collapsed. And her body, too, collapsed against him as she buried her face into his shoulder so she wouldn't have to look at him directly, her barely audible words muffled in a choked half-sob against his collared shirt. "You're not wrong. You're not wrong."

When Spencer released her wrists from his grasp, she fully expected him to push her away and coldly turn his back to her, but, to her surprise, he put his arm around her, gently nudging her body sideways so she was curled against him. As the tears flowed freely down her face, her charcoal mascara and eyeliner staining the chest of his collared shirt where she rested her head, he just petted her hair and whispered soothingly, "Shhh. Shhh. I know. It's OK, Emily. It's all going to be OK."

Once her hiccuping sobs had quieted and the last tear trickled down her cheek, Emily suddenly realized that Spencer was holding her in a lover's embrace: at some point during her hysterical outburst, she had apparently wrapped her left arm around his waist and started tracing the outline of his ribs through his cotton shirt with her hand while Spencer's fingers repetitively swept through her stark black hair and down her back.

She didn't want the moment to end. In fact, her proximity to Spencer's body only made her want more of him. When she dared to shift her head upward, her breath warm against his neck, he froze for a moment before she confessed, in a low voice, "it was OxyContin. I mean, it is. OxyContin."

His throat vibrated against her lips as he asked, hesitantly, "did you do it because of me? Because of what happened on Friday?"

_It would be so easy to say yes, _she thought. _To remain safe here in his arms and declare my love for him, to insist that he is the single, solitary thing standing in the way of an otherwise inevitable future of drug addiction and misery. To kiss him and touch him and make him feel things he's never felt before. To make him fall in love with me._

But she knew that coercing him into mistaking sex for love would be the worst lie of all, worse even than allowing him to believe she was dead for six months. It was the kind of lie that, once realized, could drive him away forever. And the complete truth - saying the words "I'm in love with you" out loud - could be equally as dangerous.

Emily settled for something in between. "I was at home watching _The Bodyguard _-" she started to explain before she was interrupted.

"The _what?"_ Spencer asked, confused.

"You know, the Whitney Houston movie?"

She felt him shake his head above her. "Not familiar."

"Are you serious? What, were you living in a cave in 1992?"

"Emily, I was eleven years old in 1992. Whitney Houston movies weren't exactly on my agenda."

She ignored his not-so-subtle reminder of the age difference between them and continued, "OK. Well, in the movie, Whitney Houston plays a famous singer with a stalker so she hires Kevin Costner to be her bodyguard. At first, he resents the assignment but over time they end up falling in love and ..." Emily hesitated. "I don't want to spoil the ending if you've never seen it."

Spencer's laugh vibrated through his chest. "This doesn't sound like a movie I'd ever watch voluntarily."

"Fine. So he takes a bullet for her and saves her life and then he realizes that she won't give up her career but that he can't be her bodyguard anymore because he loves her too much. And yet he can't be her lover, either, because he'll always want to protect her." Emily's voice broke just remembering it. "So in the last scene, he's standing on the runway watching her leave and she stops the plane before it takes off and runs into his arms and kisses him goodbye and then that song plays ... " She moved her hand from his side to directly below her chin, her palm pressed against his heart as she sang the opening bars, "If I should stay, I would only be in your way / So I'll go but I know / I'll think of you every step of the way / And I will always love you / I will always love you ..."

"You're a terrible singer," Spencer observed.

"That's not the _point," _Emily insisted desperately, tears once again dropping from her eyes and down onto his neck, his shirt. "The point is ... why couldn't they be together? Why didn't one of them realize that being away from the person you're in love with is torture, absolute torture, and that no job could ever be worth that kind of pain?"

"So you took OxyContin ..."

"Snorted," she corrected him, wincing.

"Excuse me. So you _snorted _OxyContin because you watched a sad movie?" There was an almost humorous disbelief in Spencer's voice. "I've been to a lot of AA meetings and heard a lot of people talk about their reasons for using, but that's definitely a new one."

"It ... reminded me of something," Emily mumbled into his shirt. She resolved that this was as much as she was going to say about the topic. If Spencer was really so clueless that he couldn't make the obvious connection, then she wasn't going to spell it out for him. And yet she still couldn't help herself from clarifying: "... it reminded me of someone."

There. That was it. She closed her eyes and slid her arm over his stomach, holding him tight as she inhaled deeply, savoring his scent. It could be the last time she ever had a chance to be this close to him again.

"And is that why you really stopped by your apartment earlier? To get the bottle of Oxy?"

He already knew the answer but she nodded anyway. "And ..." _God, why did she have to be so fucking _honest _with him? _"the bottles of Adderall, Ambien, and Valium, too."

"OK," Spencer said, sitting up and forcing her head off his chest. Emily glanced at him warily as he smoothed his brown hair behind his ears and stood up, grabbed her black bag, and put it on the bed next to her. "Take them out. We're going to flush them."

"What?" Emily exclaimed, any gratitude she felt toward him for his calm and compassionate response to her revelation quickly dissipating into stubborn resentment. "No!"

He shrugged. "Then I'll do it myself."

She pounced on the bag but Spencer quickly wrestled it from her grasp, his magician-quick hands unzipping it sideways so the contents spilled all over the bed. After collecting the pill bottles, holding each between the one of the four fingers on his left hand, he reached down and dangled her black lace bra from his other hand. "Nice," he teased her, smirking.

"Shut up," she growled. "This isn't funny."

Spencer's expression turned serious as he dropped the bra and examined the four prescription bottles. "You're right," he agreed. "It isn't funny. It isn't funny at all."

Emily glowered at him. She shouldn't have told him a fucking thing. The mixed signals he'd been giving her all day must have confused her. Suddenly, she felt extremely and irrationally angry - at herself, for being so honest ... but mostly at Reid, for playing with her emotions and manipulating her into giving up the one thing that could have made this trip just a little bit easier for her.

"I'm going to make you an offer," he said, stealthily shifting the four bottles between his fingers. "We can open this bottle of Oxy here and do it together ..."

"No!" Emily cried out, her black eyes widening in horror.

"Or ..." Spencer continued, his voice raising. "... or we can flush these and I promise I'll do something that will make you feel even better than OxyContin."

"Like ... like a massage?" she asked hopefully.

He laughed, genuinely delighted. "Something like that."

Emily looked down. She wasn't sure what Spencer could possibly have in mind but she was sure about one thing: she was certainly not going to be responsible for his relapse. "Flush them," she whispered, mostly to herself.

She never could have done it without him there.

It was his hand reaching out for hers, pulling her toward the bathroom. His hand giving her one of the bottles. She opened it without looking at the label, emptying the contents into the toilet. Light blue. Valium. The next. Bright orange. Adderall. Then small white sticks. Ambien. She swallowed hard. Of course, luck would have it that the last bottle was the one she wanted the most. Emily glanced at Spencer insecurely, despising herself for betraying the vulnerability she felt.

"I - I can't. Will you do it?" He shook his head and she swore to god in that moment she hated absolutely every fucking thing about him.

"You have to be the one to do it," Spencer urged her, gently pressing the bottle into her palm. "But I'm right here with you. You don't have to do it alone."

_Like he did it alone, _Emily thought. _Like he did it alone even though he was profoundly physically addicted and had every reason in the world to keep using._

She closed her eyes, unscrewed the bottle cap, and listened as the pills fell into the toilet, blindly reaching for the handle and flushing. She opened her eyes to watch in dismay as the last of the tablets disappeared, leaving only a slight multicolored residue on the bottom of the bowl.

Spencer grinned at her and reached out his arms. She fell into them, holding onto him and smiling against his chest as he murmured into her dark shiny hair, "I'm so proud of you, Emily. I'm so proud of you."

When he kissed the top of her head, his mouth lingered. Something shifted between them. His hands were roaming across her back, his fingers reaching underneath her shirt to trace light circles against her bare skin. He buried his face in her hair and nuzzled his nose back and forth. It was unspeakably erotic and Emily felt her body respond instantly. She pulled back, a thousand questions forming on her lips, but before she was able to speak, Spencer's mouth was on hers, kissing her into oblivion, his soft lips and his tongue slowly meeting hers, his teeth gently biting and sucking on her lower lip as she suppressed a moan from deep within her body.

"Wha -" she started to ask, her face flushed with desire.

"Take off everything except your bra and panties and get on the bed," Spencer instructed in a low voice. "It's time for your reward."


	6. Coming Undone

While Spencer waited in the bathroom, Emily swept the clothing that had fallen out of her "go bag" from the bed onto the floor and, with trembling fingers, pulled off her shoes, her socks, her black pants, and her brown sweater, adding them to the haphazard pile in front of her feet. After easing herself down onto the comforter, she tried out several different poses, imagining what Spencer would see when he emerged into the main cabin - and which one he'd find the most enticing. Hands behind her head with her legs crossed casually? Or ... legs slightly spread with fingers intertwined over her stomach? Or ... sitting up with her legs in the "butterfly" position, hands resting on her knees?

When she moved onto her stomach, resting her face on her elbows and crossing her long legs behind her in the air, Emily noticed, to her embarrassment, that she'd been making ridiculous faces each time she shifted positions: fluttering her eyelashes and forcing her lips into a seductive pout like a porn star waiting for the video cameras to begin rolling. _Oh, for Christ's sake, Emily, _she scolded herself. _Stop it. He wants to give you a massage. He doesn't want to fuck you. And even if he did ..._ Instantly, she terminated this line of thinking and decided on crossing her legs while interlocking her fingers over her stomach. No big deal. Exactly how she'd been sitting during takeoff.

Only this time she was wearing nothing but a red bra and matching silk panties.

Emily closed her eyes and casually rested her head on the goose-feather pillow as though she was merely taking a nap, even while trying to suppress the sound of her own breath, straining her ears to listen for Reid's footsteps. _What's taking him so long? _Emily wondered, squirming uncomfortably_. Is this about Friday night? Is he just trying to get back at me by making me feel as vulnerable and disillusioned as he felt when I gave him his first "real" kiss? No. No way. Impossible. Spencer isn't capable of that kind of cruelty ... right?_

For the first time since returning from Paris, she was forced to admit to herself that she didn't know anymore.

Not only that, Emily realized, but she didn't even really know _Spencer _anymore. The Spencer Reid she'd left behind six months earlier never would have directly intervened to prevent her from using drugs; he would have kept making snide comments about addiction and utilized every conversation as an opportunity to cite statistics on prescription drug abuse mortality rates. And the Spencer Reid she'd left behind never would have stroked her thigh so brazenly while their colleagues were present or taken the initiative to kiss her in the bathroom of the plane. Hell, _that _Spencer Reid would have considered merely holding her while she cried - on a bed, no less - to be a completely unacceptable violation of his boundaries and his personal space. He most certainly never would have dared to order her - yes, that's right, _order _her - to take her clothes off in his presence.

Emily chewed on her bottom lip, not wanting to believe that Reid could have anything malicious or humiliating prepared for her, but there were so many questions lingering in her mind. Mostly, why had his behavior changed so dramatically between the moment she'd seen him pouring sugar into his coffee earlier that morning and the moment, less than half an hour later, when he began to touch her thigh under the table in the BAU briefing room?

She needed to find out before this went any further.

But when Emily opened her blurred eyes, she froze instantly. There was a figure. Standing at the edge of the bed. Watching her.

Ian Doyle.

She screamed. Didn't reach for her gun. Couldn't. Just closed her eyes, screaming like she hadn't screamed since she was eleven years old and a French diplomat at one of her mother's galas had wandered upstairs into her bedroom and tried to pull off her nightgown. Screamed and screamed and screamed, closing her eyes tightly, not wanting to believe what was happening to her.

"Emily! Emily, what's wrong? Emily! Talk to me!"

It was like emerging from a trance, gradually processing Spencer's concerned voice in her ears. His gentle hand lightly pressed against her back. His safe, familiar scent filling her nostrils. Emily gasped for air as her eyes darted around the room. "I thought ..." She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, audibly shuddering from the residual effect of her racing heartbeat. "I thought I saw Ian Doyle standing there. Watching me. Waiting for me."

"Ian Doyle is dead, Emily. It was me you saw standing there. It was just me," Spencer reassured her, smoothing his messy and tangled light brown hair out of his face and tucking it behind his ears. "I'm going to leave you for one minute to let the pilots know we're safe. Is that OK? I promise I'll be right back."

She nodded her consent. _Ian Doyle is dead. Spencer killed Ian Doyle. You know that, Emily. God, what is _wrong _with you? _she berated herself as she listened to his voice telling the crew that everything was fine; his colleague had been having a nightmare.

When Spencer returned, a torrent of excuses began to pour out of her mouth before he'd even had a chance to finish locking the door to the cabin. He turned to face her, his expression gravely serious, and motioned with his hand for her to stop talking. "Listen to me carefully, Emily. I killed Tobias with my own gun, but after it happened? It didn't erase all of the fear and trauma he put me through. Just because Ian Doyle is physically dead doesn't mean he's dead in your mind." He paused as he took a seat next to her on the bed, his shifting eyes fixated on his mismatched socks. "And I'm sorry for scaring you like that. I should have known better but when I came out of the bathroom and saw you laying there ... you just looked so ..."

Spencer's voice trailed off. He coughed, uneasily flicking his eyes up to meet Emily's penetrating, inquisitive stare, leaving the unfinished sentence dangling in the air. Annoyed, she finally prompted, "I looked so _what_, Reid?"

"You just looked so ... so beautiful ... that I wanted to make sure the image would be imprinted on my brain forever," he disclosed quietly. This time, he didn't look away.

Neither did she.

Emily smiled shyly, reached forward to cup his face in her hands, and kissed him. Uncertainly, almost chastely, at first ... but then he shifted his body sideways and gripped her hips with both hands, lightly stroking his thumbs against the bare flesh above her panties. And he kissed her back.

Oh, did he ever kiss her back.

It reminded Emily of the time they'd been working a case and an autistic child taught him a simple melody on the piano - and, less than two weeks later, he was effortlessly playing Chopin and Mozart on his keyboard. Except this time he was making music on her body.

Spencer took the lead, opening his heart-shaped lips against hers and teasing her with his tongue until she couldn't take it anymore and shoved her tongue in his mouth, hungrily twisting it against his. When they broke apart, he kissed his way across her cheek, gently sucked on her earlobe and pressed his pillow mouth against her neck before slowly, agonizingly slowly, licking his way back up to her lips, where she was eagerly waiting for him.

Both were breathing heavily, whimpering and moaning into each others' mouths. Emily felt like they were creating an entirely new language of desire as they floated in their own world somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean.

When she reached down to grip his erection through his brown pleated pants, though, Spencer suddenly jumped back on the bed and shoved her hand off.

"Wh- what's wrong?" Emily asked, dismayed. "I thought -"

Spencer shook his head. "This is just for you. I want you to lay down on the bed ... but I want you to promise you won't touch me."

"Why?" she wanted to know, a hurt expression clouding her face, her eyes. "Why can't I touch you?"

He sighed. "Emily ... I've gotten used to ... to suppressing my desires. You can't be a pubescent boy surrounded by beautiful college students and survive any other way. To make extra money, I used to tutor some of the girls - some of the women, I mean - in my classes and when one of them noticed the ... the effect she had on me and teased me into ... into losing control, without even touching me ... I vowed to learn how to shut off that part of myself and never let it happen again."

"You're not twelve years old anymore, Reid," Emily carefully reminded him. "Besides, don't you ..." She blushed, feeling the red heat crawling up her neck. "Don't you masturbate?"

"Sometimes," he admitted, his face flushing scarlet. "Once a month, maybe."

She gaped at him, her rosy lips opening in a silent "O" as she marveled, _Once a month? Not counting my six month dry spell in Paris, I turn into a raging bitch if I don't get off at least once a _week. _And I've never known a man who could last for more than a few days without having an orgasm. If that. Unless ..._

"Are you on medication, Spencer?" she inquired as non-judgmentally as possible.

"No!" he exclaimed. "It's just that ... it's just that it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of _trust _before I ... before I can ... let myself lose control with someone else. I still feel ashamed when I can't suppress it completely and have to ... have to relieve myself."

She flinched involuntarily at the word "trust" but couldn't help wondering what - or _(who) _- caused him to become so aroused that he couldn't stop himself from masturbating. Did Spencer ever think of her the way she always thought of him when she touched herself?

"Anyway," he reminded her, steering her away from the conversation, the faint hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips, "I have to try and compete with the pills I just made you flush down the toilet." Although reluctant to end the conversation, Emily permitted him to ease her down onto the bed as he whispered in her ear, "so just relax and let me be your OxyContin."

For some inexplicable reason, she found this statement to be so erotic that her entire body throbbed with desire and she nodded complicity.

He sat on his knees next to her, leaning down to press his mouth against hers, as he began stroking her with his fingertips. Up and down her arms and over the hands that were holding his face as they continued their intimate, deep kissing. Fingers brushing through the top of her long black hair and down her cheeks, her neck, the top of her chest ... tracing her ribs and sliding across her stomach ... oh, lower across her stomach, and then even lower ... right above the waistline of her panties, rubbing back and forth, over and over again, until she involuntarily arched her back and raised her pelvis, groaning, thighs already spread in anticipation.

When Spencer sat back and asked, so cordially she would have found it comical if he had been someone else, someone who wasn't so goddamn sweet, "Can I take your bra off?" she offered, "I'll do it," unfastening it and tossing it aside, revealing her perfectly-proportioned breasts and hard pencil-eraser nipples.

He didn't move for a moment. Just kept staring. It started to make Emily feel insecure - no one had ever scrutinized her body like this before - until he locked his sunken eyes with hers and uttered, simply, "you're perfect."

Emily wanted to unzip his pants and suck him greedily until he came in her mouth, just for that comment alone. No one else ever could have said such a thing to her while sounding so innocently genuine. At least, no one else ever had.

Then again, she'd never been with anyone like Spencer Reid.

Keeping his eyes fixed on her face, gauging her reaction, Spencer circled her breasts with his feathery fingertips, cupping them in his palms and gently squeezing while she whined and writhed beneath him, crying out when he ran the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. "Ohhhh," she sighed when she caught her breath, her chest heaving. It felt like heaven. No one had ever touched her with such deliberate care, like her body was a book written in Braille. It was both satisfying and maddening at the same time.

When he used each of his five fingers, from thumb to pinkie, to stroke her nipples, Emily didn't think she could take it anymore. "Touch me," she begged, grabbing his wrist and pressing his hand against the damp crotch of her panties. "Please touch me there."

"Just a little," he warned in a low voice, licking his dry lips. "Because you said 'please.''

Spencer moved two fingers against her panties with the same slow and leisurely pace he'd been using on the rest of her body, still watching her face as she moaned in ecstasy through half-closed eyes. Up and down and up and down again, finally using one of his fingers to draw small circles over the silk material covering her clit. When Emily responded by raising her hips, hoping to provoke an increase the pressure of his touch, he removed his fingers entirely and placed his hand on the bed beside her, leaning in to kiss her. She growled against his mouth in protest. It felt like she'd already waited hours. Or years. Or her entire fucking life.

Emily opened her mouth against his, trying to pull away and beg him to make her come, when Spencer began to mimic the earlier movement of his hands against her, only he used his lips and his tongue this time. It felt so incredible that the slickness in her panties increased and the words she'd been about to say dissipated somewhere between her brain and her vocal cords. He slid his mouth up and down each arm, lightly sucking on each of her fingers, and then ran his mouth along her stomach, blowing cool air onto that same goosebumped flesh, teasingly drawing his tongue from underneath her breasts to across her hips, until she was so crazed with lust that her limbs were twitching erratically and she knew she was done. Totally and completely fucking done.

"Please," Emily moaned loudly. "Please, you're killing me."

He responded by moving his mouth up to her breasts, tonguing circles around each of them, then sucking on one of her nipples while gently rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger. He switched between the two, savoring her hopeful expression every time he moved his mouth away and glanced down at her pelvis gyrating in the air, her cunt almost visibly throbbing with need, this prolonged arousal the most exquisite torture she'd ever experienced. And the feeling of his impossibly hard cock twitching against her leg, the stiffness she could feel even through his pants ... it only fueled her desire for him.

Finally, Emily, nearly-insane with lust, choked out, "I- I can't ... can't take it anymore ... I need to touch myself ..." but just as her hand reached into her panties and she grazed a finger over her engorged, sensitive clit with a deep, satisfied groan, Spencer encircled her wrist with his hand, stopping her movements.

"Let me," he offered, sucking hard on one of her nipples, holding it between his teeth for a moment before releasing. "I mean ... do you want to let me?"

"Y-yes," Emily groaned, shuddering. "But please ... I need it now ... I can't take this anymore ..."

There was something so incredibly sexy about the determined focus on Spencer's face as he hooked his fingers through the sides of her underwear and slid them down her legs. Emily watched in fascination as he held them to his nose and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, an appreciative "mmmmm" escaping from his throat. After he ran his tongue along the damp silken material, he opened his hazel eyes and murmured, "you taste even better than I imagined." Emily smiled to herself and asked, in a husky voice, "so you've imagined tasting me?"

Spencer didn't answer, at least not with words. He responded by leaning down between her legs and licking the length of her slit, commenting, "my god, you're so wet, Emily ... your pussy is so wet for me ..." She'd never heard him talk dirty before and her nipples hardened painfully at how fucking _horny _it made her, how much she wanted him. All of him. Or as much of him as he'd allow her to have. She could feel the droplets of liquid dripping onto his fingers as he easily inserted two fingers into her and softly pulsated them against her most sensitive area, in a "come here" motion.

"You know," Reid informed her in his 'lecturer voice', "the clitoris has more than 8,000 nerve endings." He circled his tongue around her clit several times while Emily, completely powerless, grabbed the bedsheets and cried out in pleasure. Yes, oh yes, this was what she'd been waiting for ...

"But some women find," Spencer added, pulling his face away and continuing the steady drumming of his two fingers inside of her, "that G-spot orgasms are more pleasurable. There's a lot of controversy about this but I think that all women are capable of female ejaculation. What do you think?"

Feeling her cunt tighten around his fingers, Emily sat up on her elbows, alarmed. "I - I don't ... don't know," she said uncertainly.

"Have you ever?" he asked, lowering his face and gently sucking on her clit, just once, as she turned her head toward the ceiling, trembling and moaning.

"J-just once," she managed to gasp. "It wasn't ... it wasn't a good experience. He ... he made his servant bathe me after. And then he made me ... I ... I had to clean it up ... while he stood over me, telling me how ... how disgusting ..."

"I don't think it's disgusting," Spencer frowned. "I think it's incredible that a woman's body is capable of that. I can _feel _it, Emily. I can feel it, right here." He pressed his long fingers against the spongy area, sliding them back and forth, resulting in an incoherent string of grunts as she tried to make herself hold back.

"Let go," he urged her, again putting his mouth around her clit and sucking hard. Her whole body was shaking and she knew she couldn't last much longer. "I want to drink your come. Please let me drink your come, Emily," Spencer implored.

Before she could respond, his lips were mercilessly sucking on her clit, his tongue flicking the sensitive area underneath while his fingers kept pulsating against her G-spot ... and with his words - "I want to drink your come" - circling through her mind and heightening her excitement, Emily finally gave in: spreading her thighs wider, pushing her hands against the back of Spencer's head, grabbing fistfuls of his soft hair, as his lips and his tongue and his fingers galloped even faster, all in perfect rhythm.

Her orgasm built and built and built ... and then she was coming, suddenly and brutally coming, the world receding as she felt her body shudder violently, liquid gushing from inside of her and Spencer - oh, god, Spencer was swallowing over and over again and she could _feel _it against her clit as he alternated between sucking and swallowing - the combined sensation from there and from inside of her, much deeper inside of her, inspiring sounds she didn't think she was capable of making, didn't even immediately recognize as her own.

The magnificent release she'd desperately waited for was so much better than she'd ever dreamed; it was like she was rising out of her body to some place she'd never been before, like time had stopped, as she came again and again and again, unable to determine where one orgasm ended and the next began. When she felt her body give one last violent shudder as Spencer gently held her clit between his teeth and his tongue pressed hard against her, she screamed, "I love you, I love you, I love you," before crashing back down to earth, pushing his head away as he abruptly stopped, his face appearing out-of-focus and fuzzy as he looked up at her from between her legs.

Emily tried to open her eyes completely but she felt so light-headed, the world still spinning around her, that she was overcome by dizziness and forced to close them again. Without his touch on her body, she suddenly felt empty. Alone. "Spencer -" she half-sobbed ... but he was ahead of her, already crawling up the bed to wrap his arm around her stomach, softly kissing her neck and then her lips, as she kissed him back hungrily, greedily, gratefully, shifting her body sideways to drape her bare leg over his, unable to prevent herself from slowly moving her hips up and down, her damp and sticky pubic hair pressed against the area where he was _so fucking hard _she couldn't prevent the sharp inhalation of breath that escaped from her mouth.

"Emily ... Emily, no," he insisted firmly, disentangling himself from her and scooting to the edge of the bed, still holding her around the waist, still covering her neck with kisses, still letting her know that it was OK, that he was right there, that he wasn't going anywhere.

They remained in that position, not speaking, until Emily's body stopped humming and buzzing and she felt comfortable enough to open her eyes. When she turned her face toward him, taking in his messy brown hair and the shiny residue of her orgasm sticky on his lips and his chin, she shyly said, "Hi."

"Hi," he responded, softly kissing her. "That was ... incredible."

_You're telling me, _Emily thought. "Did you ... did you like it?" she asked insecurely. "I mean, did you like doing it?"

"I loved it," Spencer assured her, stroking her cheek with his palm. "I wasn't sure if I would. Morgan always talks about it like it's a chore or something, but ..." He paused, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. "But maybe it's just because he's never been with you. Or someone who feels and smells and tastes as good as you."

"I -" Emily instinctively suppressed the words that almost bubbled out of her mouth - _I love you _- as the realization hit her that she'd _already said _those words to him when she was riding the last wave of her orgasm.

She didn't care about hiding her true feelings anymore. She'd just permitted herself to be more physically vulnerable than she ever had with anyone else, and she was ready to become emotionally vulnerable, too. Even if he didn't reciprocate. It didn't matter. She wanted him to know.

"Spencer," she whispered, forcing her dark dilated eyes to meet his, "When I said 'I love you' earlier, I want you to know ..."

He cut her off midsentence. "Oh, I know. It's not uncommon for women to say things like that during episodes of intense physical pleasure. Don't worry. I know you didn't really mean it like that."

Emily didn't know how to respond. A small part of her wanted to yell, "yes, I really did mean it like that! I could just never let my guard down enough to say it to you!" but her self-protective drive kicked in and she bobbed her head uncertainly. _Think about it, Emily, _she rationalized. _Two days ago he wasn't ready to kiss you. Today, he's not ready to let you pleasure him even though he'd probably come in about ten seconds. Do you _really _think he's ready to hear the truth about your feelings for him?_

Emily couldn't risk losing this. Couldn't risk losing him. Not again. Not now.

So she just muttered, "I'm so tired," turning away from him so he couldn't see the disappointment in her eyes. "Let's get some sleep."

He kept his arm wrapped protectively around her waist as she feigned sleep, regulating her breathing and uttering a few nonsensical phrases, which she'd been known to do during periods of deep REM dreaming. In truth, she wanted to see how Spencer handled his arousal. Whether she'd aroused him to the point where, as he put it, he had to "lose control."

Ten minutes passed before she felt his arm leave her waist and the weight of his body move off the bed. He was watching her, she knew instinctively. Purposefully, she shifted slightly to give him a better look of her nude figure, mumbling erotic sounding phrases under her breath.

And then she heard the lock on the bathroom door click and, moments later, the familiar sound of a hand stroking a well-lubricated cock. It wasn't his need to get off that surprised her, though. It was the words he moaned underneath his breath.

"Oh god, Emily ... please fuck me ... oh god ... fuck me, Emily ... unnnnhhh, oh Emily, don't stop, don't stop fucking me ... you're so hot and tight ... you feel so good ... fuck my hard cock, please god don't stop ... don't ever stop fucking me ... oh god, oh Emily!" and then she heard a stream of come hitting the water in the toilet bowl, followed by a deep groan and several hard spurts that splashed in the toilet until, she imagined, just a small dribble remained.

Her heart was racing, her clit throbbing, and her pussy slick once again after hearing Spencer fantasize about fucking her. Especially after hearing the sheer force and amount of semen he'd released during his orgasm, unable to stop herself from imagining what he would feel like inside of her, his dick pulsating and releasing a hot jet of come that mixed with her wetness and dripped out of her ... Emily was brought back to reality when, to her amazement, she heard the toilet flush, followed by the unmistakable sound of Spencer's hand rubbing himself again. More slowly this time, with less desperation.

Despite the newfound arousal sending electric jolts through her body, Emily was determined to continue pretending to sleep even after he'd emerged from the bathroom. She was listening to him at his most vulnerable, his most shameful. It would be like ... like him listening to her tell Garcia earlier that she was in love with him. How many "Friday Night Fix-It Nights" would it take to fix something like that?

Emily resolved never to reveal that she'd overheard him. No matter what.

She couldn't have possibly known that Spencer, too, had overheard her in the bathroom and had made the very same resolution only several hours earlier.

Or just how ugly "Friday Night Fix-It Night" could become if they both stopped trying to fix their friendship and began to focus on on fixing their own unspoken secrets instead.


	7. Torn

When Emily awakened, she was momentarily disoriented. Underneath the feathered comforter, Spencer's long lean arms were protectively encircling her waist, his bare chest pressed against her back, his breath warm on her neck. To her surprise, she realized that she didn't recall falling asleep or hearing Spencer disrobe down to his briefs - or feel him slide the blanket from underneath her, pulling it over both of them, and placing his arms around her. Typically, even in sleep, she was always on guard: roused by the slightest sound or movement nearby. They all were. It was an occupational hazard of sorts.

_It must be the residual effect of the OxyContin, _Emily told herself uneasily. _The drug must still be leaving your system. This doesn't have anything to do with feeling safe in someone's arms for the first time in years. It can't. Because an unsub doesn't give a shit if you feel safe or not. Which means you're never safe. Never. And if you forget that, even for a second, you'll be less safe than you've ever been before._

She laid there for a long time, trying to silence the cynic in her, forcing her eyes closed and reliving the events of several hours earlier. Spencer's wise eager eyes fixed on hers from between her thighs while his tongue lapped against her. The expression of bliss on his face when he held her panties to his nose and licked them. His low voice insisting "I want to drink your come" and the feeling of letting go completely, gushing fluid all over him and soaking the bedsheets while he swallowed and sucked her. The brief moment she felt his large cock pressing against her through his clothes, and the words he groaned as he masturbated in the bathroom - "please fuck me, Emily" - ringing in her ears.

She didn't mean to start shifting her hips up and down, rubbing her body against his. Wasn't even aware she was doing it until she felt his cock twitch and rise against her back. It felt so fucking good that she kept going, gyrating her hips more forcefully.

"Stop it, Emily."

She jumped, startled, before turning toward him, unable to hide the guilty look on her face. "I was just trying to ..."

"I know what you were trying to do," Spencer laughed, his hazel eyes lighting up almost mischievously. "Now stop it."

He kissed her lightly on the mouth, just once, and even after everything that had transpired between them, that one little kiss still made her heart soar with love and longing.

"We've got ..." Spencer checked his watch. "... about an hour and a half until landing. I think we need to discuss victimology."

Emily flinched at the idea of profiling Mandy with such a textbook term as "victimology." Mandy wasn't just a victim. She'd been a friend, a partying companion, a confidante. She'd been Emily's only regret upon leaving Paris and boarding that flight back to DC.

"Let's go over everything again, starting with how you met."

Emily began to recite the story in detail but after only a few sentences, she paused, biting her lip in confusion. In the bathroom at the art gallery, Mandy had definitely told Emily that her father had been killed the previous year. And yet the death certificate indicated that the murder had occurred six months prior to the present date, with Mandy purchasing plane tickets and obtaining a travel visa less than a month later. Which meant that Mandy's father had died only weeks before Emily first met her.

"So either she's suffering from complicated grief and her calendar simply stopped the day he died, or ..."

"Or what?" Emily asked sharply, her dark eyes narrowing.

"... or she lied to you," Spencer finished, grimacing apologetically.

_How_ dare _he? _she fumed. _How dare he suggest that the only friend I've had outside of work since college was lying to me about something like this?_

Spencer sensed the change in Emily's attitude before she even opened her mouth to speak, rising and sitting up against the pillow behind him, pulling his arms away from her and crossing them protectively against his chest, as though shielding himself from an anticipated blow.

"I want you to listen to me, Reid, and I want you to listen carefully," Emily said in an even, deliberate tone, challenging him with her unblinking dagger-like stare. "Mandy was quite possibly the only real friend I've ever had. She never would have lied to me on purpose. Never. And if she did lie about her father the first time we met, then she would have told me the truth later."

"You mean, kind of like you told her the truth about being a former FBI agent who faked your death and left your friends - your real friends, Emily, whether you want to acknowledge that or not - completely destroyed and incapacitated with grief? Did you ever tell her that 'Leigh' was a pseudonym? Or that you'd left the US to escape an Irish terrorist who tracked you down after you had a ... a _relationship _... with him when you were undercover for Interpol? You know, like a real friend would have? Did you ever tell her anything about the family you left behind, Emily? Did you ever tell her about me?" The words shot out of his mouth at rocket-fire speed, sarcastic and bitter and anguished.

"No," Emily responded quietly, hugging her knees to her chest. "No, I didn't."

Spencer softened when she turned her head away in an obvious attempt to prevent him from seeing the glassy shimmer of tears filling her eyes. He didn't need to continue. He'd made his point.

"What else did she tell you about her life back in America?" he prodded gently.

"Not much," Emily admitted, furrowing her brow. Those months, those days, they were all a blur to her now. It seemed like it had all happened a lifetime ago. "Oh, wait!" she exclaimed. "One night, we were on Ecstasy ..."

Spencer sighed audibly.

"I'm going to be in a lot of trouble when we return to Quantico, aren't I?" Emily suddenly realized, her voice quivering.

He didn't answer.

"I couldn't have come back here with anyone else," she confided, those dark eyes looking at him askance. "You do know that, right?"

"I know," Spencer replied, rubbing her shoulder and tentatively putting his arm around her so she could place her head on his bare chest. "So tell me what Mandy said ... what she said when you were on Ecstasy."

Not having to see his face made it easier for her to talk. "She told me that when she left the States, she also left behind a boyfriend. They met when she was in high school and he was going to a ... a trade school or something. He lived nearby, but in a bad neighborhood. Not like hers."

"Probably Yonkers," Spencer murmured to himself. "It's a part of Westchester, bordering the Bronx, and their high schools are all trade schools."

"Mandy said he introduced her to drugs back in high school, but ..." Emily paused, confused. "But she told me they also used drugs together when she was in college. So he must have ... followed her to college?"

Spencer shook his head above her. "The case file said that she received her undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence. It's in Bronxville. Only a few train stops from Scarsdale and directly above Yonkers. Did she ever tell you his name?"

"No. Just that ... her father hated him. That he wanted her to be with someone better. And that it was the only time she ever defied his wishes. Even medical school was her dad's idea. Mandy didn't want to be a doctor. But she believed that the only reason her father lived through her mother's death when she was three was because he couldn't leave her an orphan. So she felt like it was her responsibility to live out his dreams."

"Did she cry?" Spencer interjected.

"What?" Emily asked, momentarily jarred out of her memory of that night.

"When she told you those things. Did she cry?"

"We were on Ecstasy, Spencer. It's physically impossible to cry on Ecstasy ... which is what makes it so amazing," Emily couldn't prevent the smirk that crossed her lips at knowing more than he did about something for once.

"This is what doesn't make sense," Reid mused. "Her whole life, she was conditioned to honor her father. But when he dies, instead of going to medical school as the ultimate tribute to his wishes, she takes off to Paris and turns her life into one nonstop party. And not only that, but she also leaves behind the one person she was willing to defy him over. Why?"

"Could it be ..." Emily gulped, hesitant to speak the words out loud. "Could it be a manifestation of complicated grief?"

"It's possible. If she was in denial about the death, starting over in a place where she could dissociate herself from the loss does make sense. Both her boyfriend and medical school might have served as painful reminders that she failed to live out her father's expectations for her while he was still alive." He stopped, brushing his hand through his hair in a familiar nervous tic. "And by moving to Paris, she knew there wouldn't be anyone around to tell her that 'this isn't what he would have wanted.'"

Emily lifted her head and whispered into his neck, "Did anyone tell you that when I was ... when I was gone?"

Spencer nodded. "Morgan. I had been trying to find some Dilaudid for several weeks but I couldn't - I didn't know how to go about getting it. So I bought heroin on the street instead."

"You didn't!" she gasped, her muscles tightening in shock.

"I did," he confessed. "And when we were on the jet ... Morgan just _knew_. I guess working in narcotics gave him kind of a - a sixth sense about it. I kept waiting and waiting for him to fall asleep like the others, but he wouldn't. He didn't stop watching me for a second. It got to the point where I didn't care anymore. So he watched as I went into the bathroom. And he waited. Waited until I'd cooked it and filtered it and drawn it into the syringe. Waited until I was just about to take my belt off and ... and inject it ... before he knocked on the door. He said ..." Spencer smiled at the memory. "He said, 'You can quietly open that door right now or I swear to God, this is about to get real ugly, real fast.' So I opened the door and Morgan came into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him so it was just us. And he took the needle out of my hand and told me ... he told me, 'Reid, this isn't what Emily would have wanted for you. Imagine her looking down at you right now. You're _hurting _her, Reid. You're hurting her and she can't do anything about it. Is that what you want?' And I started crying and he stood next to me while I flushed it, all of it, and he made me promise you that I'd never touch another drug again."

"Little did I know," he added, a tinge of anger entering his voice, "that you weren't looking down on me at all but having your own drug-fueled extravaganza at that very moment. Little did I know that it wouldn't have hurt you in the least if I'd started using again."

"Are you fucking _kidding _me?" Emily sat up, holding the comforter over her bare chest and widening her eyes incredulously. "Of course it would have hurt me! God, Spencer ... I didn't go to Paris on some vacation. I went to hide out from the person who was trying to kill me! Did you know that he had my grave dug up while I was gone and realized that I'd done it again, that I'd faked my death just like I'd faked my death as 'Lauren Reynolds'? Did you know he'd already started searching for me again by the time you found him? Hotch didn't tell you that, did he? And ... do you really think you would have been able to kill Ian Doyle if you were all strung out on heroin? Even if you had, don't you remember what you were like - what _we _were like - when you were using Dilaudid?"

"But what are we like now, Emily? And, for that matter, what are _you _like? Who are you, really? Leigh, Lauren Reynolds, Emily Prentiss ... You're so good at pretending to be different people that it makes me wonder ..." His voice trailed off. "It makes me wonder how I can ever trust that it's you here with me and not some persona you've invented. You fooled Ian Doyle, a hardened international terrorist, into thinking you were really in love with him ..."

"That's what this is about?" Emily interrupted, amazed that she hadn't figured it out earlier. "That's what all of this is about? This ... this 'trust' issue? It's not because I faked my death at all, is it? It's because I faked my life."

When Spencer remained silent, Emily instantly knew she was right. "Then let me tell you about how I was able to become Lauren Reynolds. During my time at Interpol, I'd already worked a lot of difficult cases. But when I was assigned to seduce Ian Doyle, I was horrified. So horrified I almost resigned over it. But they convinced me that it was the only way to infiltrate the world of a dangerous, high-profile arms dealer and stop him from killing even more innocent people. So for two months, every single day, I was indoctrinated - brainwashed, really - into becoming Lauren: a demure, submissive, naïve woman who would find Ian Doyle attractive. I'm not at liberty to talk about the techniques they used, but by the time I went undercover, Emily Prentiss was gone and Lauren Reynolds had taken her place ... had taken _my _place, I mean."

"To the point where you were able to fall in love with him? To enjoy ..." Spencer took in a deep breath and then spat out, disgusted, "to enjoy having sex with him?"

"No. No! Absolutely not," she insisted vehemently. "I fell in love with his son. With Declan. It was the first time in my life I could actually imagine being a mother. So I just reminded myself over and over again that this was the father of the child I'd grown to love. And that made it easier to pretend I was in love with Ian."

Emily lowered her head, her black hair shielding her face. "And as for the sex? He didn't care whether or not I liked it. I didn't even have to fake it. It didn't matter to him. I just had to keep being the innocent doe-eyed ingenue he wanted me to be. Except ..." she swallowed hard, closing her eyes. "Except for this one time, when I disobeyed his wishes and tried to make Declan understand that killing innocent people is wrong, and he decided to ... to punish me. To punish me with sex. He took Viagra and fucked me from behind against the table in his dining room. For hours. With his servants passing in and out of the room, even setting the table for dinner, the very table I was bent over ... like I wasn't even there. And - and after about four hours - I couldn't help it. Four hours of him just hitting that ... spot ... over and over and over again and I reached a point where I couldn't fight against it anymore. My body betrayed me and ... and then he just stopped cold. Pulled out and ... and ... and ..."

Emily began trembling, trying to clench her jaw to silence the sound of her teeth chattering as she relived the humiliation and trauma of that memory.

"Stop, stop. I remember what you told me before. You can stop." Reid was shaken, hearing her description of the sexual sadism she'd endured. He didn't want to hear more. He couldn't.

"So can't you see now ... can't you see how much I trust you?" she questioned, raising her head so he could see the pleading desperation reflected in her long-lashed brown eyes. "And how hard it is to know that you don't trust me in the same way?"

Unsure of how to respond, Spencer kissed her. But when he opened his mouth against hers and cradled the back of her head in his palm, she pushed him away. Forcefully.

"Ow," he whined, rubbing his shoulder.

"... and that's another thing, Spencer," Emily continued. "On Friday night, you literally ran out of my apartment because I kissed you. This morning, you accused me of using you. This afternoon, you kissed me in the airplane bathroom like nothing had happened and then you went down on me. And when I woke up, you were holding me. _Holding _me! But you still won't let me touch you. Was this really a 'reward' for flushing those drugs down the toilet? I mean, did you let Morgan give you a blowjob and hold you all the way back to Quantico when he made you flush that heroin?"

"Funny," Spencer intoned, in a voice that indicated he found her tirade to be anything but. "Emily, you view sex ... differently than I do. You've used people for sex - and not only Doyle but all those people in Paris, too. It doesn't matter as much to you. It matters to me."

"So spending an hour exploring my body and then eating me out ... That meant nothing to you," she stated flatly. "Because most women find that to be more intimate than actual sex."

"I - I don't know what to say, Emily. We're landing soon and I don't know how to explain it to you."

"Would you have done the same thing with Lila Archer, if she'd let you?" Emily challenged.

Spencer thought about it, trying to picture his younger self in the pool that night and imagining what might have happened if he hadn't stopped when he did. "Yeah, I probably would have."

Emily let out a harsh, cruel laugh. "Well, I guess that's another difference between me and Lila. Because she never would have let you go down on her, not in a million years. And yet _I'm _the actress. I'm the slut."

The pilot's voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing their final descent into Paris, where it was about 7:00 pm, instructing the crew and passengers to prepare for landing. Emily stood up on shaky legs and got dressed, ignoring Spencer's reverent stare as she put on her black underwear and bra, tossing her red panties at him. "Keep these," she said sarcastically. "Morgan's going to want proof."

"I -" Spencer squeaked.

Emily finished dressing and curled her body against the side of the bed, keeping her body as far away from Spencer's as physically possible. "And just so you know? I had sex with those guys and girls in Paris to remind me of _you. _Of how I imagined it would be different with you, how you would be gentle and caring with me, how you wouldn't ever make me feel like I'd been used after it was over."

She held her legs tightly against her chest and, teardrops falling onto the pillow beneath her, muttered, "I guess I was wrong about that, though, wasn't I?"

Instinctively, he reached over to stroke the black sweater covering her arms, pleading, "Emily, I -"

"Reid, I want you to take your hand off me immediately," she growled. "And I want you to shut up. Just shut the fuck up."

So, with the uneasy realization that he had absolutely no idea how to fix this, he did.


	8. Destroyed

Stony silence with intermittent periods of intense intimacy had practically become a pattern between them. It wasn't even uncomfortable anymore: Emily pointedly staring out the window of the taxi while Spencer alternated between furtive glances at her and wide-eyed glimpses of the unfamiliar city whirling past him.

Their silence lasted until they reached the hotel, when Emily checked them in and the concierge smiled knowingly. "Ah, la suite nuptiale!" he declared.

She recoiled visibly, insisting, "No, no! Deux chambres simples!"

They conversed in French for a few more minutes before Emily turned to Spencer and uttered through gritted teeth, "For some reason, there was a mix-up in the booking and we've been given the Honeymoon Suite. There aren't any single rooms available. We could go to another hotel or even a hostel ..."

"I don't know," Spencer responded dubiously, gazing at the architecture and the artwork on the walls. "This looks really nice ..."

"Fine." Emily didn't feel like arguing. Besides, she'd just experienced the most exhausting plane ride of her life and wandering around Paris with Spencer in tow, searching for a cheap room that hadn't already been written off on one of the BAU's expense reports wasn't exactly the most appealing idea at the moment.

After exchanging a few more phrases in French, the concierge handed Emily the key cards to the room and, as they walked toward the elevators, he called out cheerfully behind them, "Apprécie le cadeau!"

"Merci," she responded respectfully, whipping her black hair over her shoulder to smile at him before entering the elevator and pressing the button for the top floor.

"What did that ... ?" Spencer asked curiously.

"It meant," she muttered, her smile turning into a grimace as she stared at her black boots, "enjoy the gift."

He was about to inquire "what gift?" until she opened the door with her key card and his face turned a shade of crimson nearly matching the valentine red bedsheets. Emily impassively flicked her eyes toward the wicker basket, disinterested, as she started to unpack her "go bag," but Spencer walked toward it, transfixed.

In the middle of the king-sized bed, the hotel staff had placed a massive gift bag containing a cache of items that didn't require any knowledge of the country's language for a person to immediately identify the contents without having to reading the text. Packs of condoms, cans of whipped cream and hot chocolate, flavored lubricants, vibrating dildos, blindfolds, handcuffs, feathered wands, and ... a box with Japanese text and an image of black panties with a USB cable?

When Spencer picked it up to examine it, curious, he heard Emily gasp, "Oh my God!" behind him, grabbing the box out of his hand and turning it over to look at the back.

"What is it?" he asked tentatively, tucking his hair behind his ears nervously as he turned his lean body around to face her.

Her black eyes shined as she scanned the instructional images and exclaimed, "They're remote control vibrating panties! This model isn't even _legal _in the States yet!"

"Remote control ... what?" Spencer squeaked, blinking rapidly.

Apparently forgetting that she was furious with him, Emily kept her eyes on the box, excitedly explaining, "OK, so a woman wears these out in public, right? And she gives her partner the remote control so he - or she - can control the speed and pressure of the vibrations. The best ones available in the States have to be hooked up to an iPod, with the vibration dependent on the rhythm of the chosen song, but this one has these little buttons on it, see?" She pointed them out on the box with her chewed fingertips. "And that gives the other person complete control, like if they were using a regular vibrator on someone. Plus, it operates on a wireless Internet connection so the person wearing them doesn't even have to be in sight for it to work!"

"But why would someone ..."

Emily anticipated his question and interjected, "Because if you're at a club, the signal can get interrupted if you're not directly in the person's line of sight, which is - I'm sure you can imagine - tremendously inconvenient."

Another question began to form on his light pink lips when Emily frowned, reached past him into the basket, and pulled out a DVD, shaking her head in disbelief as she murmured, "Penelope, you fucker."

"Please tell me it isn't _The Bodyguard_," Spencer joked, prompting a hateful stare in return.

"No," Emily whispered to herself, lowering her eyes and reading the description of the movie she'd adored upon its release but had somehow forgotten about as time passed. "It's a film called _Vendredi Soir _... Or, in English ..." She paused. "_Friday Night_."

She was grateful when he pulled out his iPhone to google it, oblivious to the tears spontaneously falling down her pale cheeks as the scenes from the tragic erotic film returned to her in vivid detail.

"Hang on, I'm reading a review ... from MattJay at ... blogspot dot com." Out loud, Spencer recited, "'One of the greatest moments in the film for me is such a simple action. As Jean sleeps peacefully just a few feet away, Laure tries on his jacket and socks, and goes for a walk around the hotel ... soaking in his scent, and the touch of his fabric against her skin, as if to store it in her memory forever. Knowing it'll all be over when morning comes.'"

Emily let out a choked sob, her voice breaking as she repeated, "... 'Knowing it'll all be over when morning comes.'" It was like the story of her and Spencer, from the title to the plot. Only, for her, it was like a series of one night stands with a frantic desperation to make each intimate moment last before they ceased to exist forever.

Spencer glanced up from his phone, an unreadable expression on his face. She could tell he wanted to reach out and touch her, his fingers drumming against his pants. He managed to suppress the urge, probably anticipating her rejection, and instead wondered aloud, "Why did Garcia arrange ... all of this? And - and why this movie?"

"I don't know," Emily lied, brushing away the residual teardrops that had collected on her face.

"Well," Spencer mused thoughtfully, stroking his chin, "you seemed to really like the idea of that ... uh ..." He could barely bring himself to say it aloud. "That vibrating underwear thing. So, um, maybe we could go to one of those, uh ... those discothèques and try them out?"

An automatic "no" sprang to Emily's lips, but the word caught in her throat when she saw him reach into the basket again.

When she saw him grab a pack of condoms.

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Grateful that they'd packed evening wear in their "go bags" just in case, although not the haute couture fashion Emily had sported the last time she'd been in Paris, her simple sleeveless black dress and his grey suit would still manage to get them through the door, at least.

In the hotel, she'd shown Reid the basic controls for the vibrating panties and in the cab he'd acted like a child with a new toy, trying out a variety of strengths and patterns, watching her face closely as he experimented switching between them. One particular rhythm - soft and slow with the occasional brief intense pulsation - caused her to bite down hard on her lip each time, stifling a moan.

"Come here," she murmured, after he'd utilized that technique three times and her entire body was tingling from the sensation. Grabbing his tie and lifting her leg effortlessly over his body, she sank down on her knees and straddled him so they could both feel the vibrations. He was hard already, hard just from watching her, and she could feel him grow even harder as she kissed him while grinding against the tightness in his pants.

"I - uh ..." While Emily left a trail of kisses along his neck, Spencer leaned against the head rest in the cab, his messy golden hair spread against the pleather seat, eyes half-closed in ecstasy.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" she purred.

Reid pressed a button on the remote control to cease the vibrations in her panties and reached down to bring her face up to his. His kisses took her by surprise; they were almost aggressive with need. She was even more surprised when he lifted his hips to meet hers, increasing the pace of their surreptitious dry-humping. "But this feels good, too."

Emily kept her movements gentle and deliberate as she kissed him deeply, and she wasn't met with any resistance when she scooted back and, through his pants, gripped the outline of hIs cock in her hand and began slowly stroking it in her palm. "And that?" she whispered against his neck, pulling her mouth away and trying to hide the insecurity in her dark eyes. "Does that feel good?"

"That feels ... that feels really really really good," he groaned, his breathing labored and his cock stiffening against her hand.

It was like the earlier ugliness between them had been entirely erased. Emily, visibly pleased, disentangled her body from his and returned to her seat in the cab. "Thank you," she told him, her long-lashed eyes serious as she gazed down into her lap, gently patting his knee. "Thank you."

She didn't have to elaborate. Spencer knew exactly what she was thanking him for.

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When they arrived at the discothèque, he trailed behind Emily, overwhelmed by the long line of gorgeous women and dashing men waiting to get in, intimidated by the sheer size of the black-clad scowling bouncer, and annoyed by the ear-splitting electronica he could hear pounding from inside the darkened windows. He'd always hated clubs, she knew, so she took his hand reassuringly and marched up to the bouncer, whose eyes lit up as he joyfully greeted her, kissing each cheek before exclaiming, "Leigh! Ma belle fille! Comment ça va?"

"Très bien, Jacques, merci," Emily replied, smiling. She gestured at Spencer, who was awkwardly standing behind her with his hands in his pockets, and introduced him: "Mon ami ... Derek."

Even Spencer knew the French meaning of "mon ami" - and the complete and total shock on the bouncer's face after "Leigh" introduced him as her boyfriend required no translation whatsoever.

"Hello," Spencer said uncertainly, giving a little half-wave.

"Et vous venez d'où, Derek?"

When Spencer helplessly flicked his eyes over at Emily, Jacques frowned at him. "Vous parlez français?"

"No," Emily intervened, visibly jumping when Spencer glared at her from the corner of his eye and reached into his pocket to press down hard on all three of the vibrating panties' remote control buttons simultaneously.

"Ah, vous êtes américain!" the bouncer exclaimed, his large face breaking into a grin as he enveloped Spencer in a huge hug, swinging him back and forth like a rag doll and then releasing him. "I am knowing English a little. I ask from where are you?"

"California," Emily answered smoothly.

"Ah, oui! California! 'I'll be back,' yes?" Spencer almost burst into a nervous laugh at this massive figure's near-perfect impression of the Terminator, the present Governor of the state, but the sound quickly withered and died in his throat when Emily turned to him with that trademark "don't you fucking dare" look across her face.

So he just nodded in agreement, racking his brain for every California cliche he could recall. All he could remember right now were the unsubs they'd caught there. "Yes. Hollywood, movie stars, beaches ... It's nice."

With a charming smile, Emily touched Jacques' sleeve and discreetly slipped €400 into his pocket as she asked him in French if they could have access to the private back room in about half an hour. He nodded and lifted the velvet rope so they could enter.

"Merci," Spencer called back over his shoulder before hissing in Emily's ear, "How much money did you just give him?"

"Don't worry," Emily responded, taking his hand and interlocking their fingers as she led him across the crowded dance floor, occasionally giving a curt, cordial nod to a passerby. "I paid him to let us use their private room in about an hour. Unless you wanted to ... ?" She gestured toward the back of the club, where men, fully clothed, had unzipped their pants and were very clearly either fucking or being fucked against the wall, on the tops of tables, or sitting in chairs.

The expression on his face said it all.

"I didn't think so," Emily smirked, leading him to an empty table where she snapped her fingers in the air and a waitress appeared.

It wasn't until the waitress had returned to place a full bottle of vodka and two shot glasses on the table that Spencer realized what Emily had ordered. "I'm in recovery ... you know I don't ..." he protested, a pained look in his hazel eyes.

"But I'm not and I do," she stated flatly, challenging him with her eyes to claim otherwise. "So I'm going to take three shots and then I'm going to get up and dance. I want you to watch me. I want you to use the controls on the vibrator while you watch me."

Emily knew the alcohol bothered Spencer, but she'd been drinking wine since she was five years old. It was a part of her culture, her identity. It's not like she was doing lines on the table or anything, for Christ's sake. So she took three shots, purposefully avoiding his disapproving gaze, and then shoved herself out of the chair, lightly kissing him, and slowly swinging her hips from the table to the dance floor.

It didn't take long for Emily to find a stunning woman, with long brown hair and emerald green eyes who met her inviting eye-lined eyes with a matched expression of lust. The two inched toward each other, at first casually dancing together without touching. That was when Emily felt the slow and steady vibration beginning in her underwear. She turned her head toward Spencer, watching him watching her, as her dance moves became more brazenly erotic. The woman stood behind Emily, stroking her long manicured fingernails through Emily's black hair while blowing minty-cool breaths against the back of her neck, her hands slowly roaming over Emily's breasts, lingering on her straining nipples, her clenched stomach, and finally gripping her waist, almost possessively.

Emily spun around so they were both grasping each others' hips, faces only inches apart, legs interlocked as they started to grind their thighs together. Between the feminine physical contact and the humming and buzzing in her crotch, Emily already felt like she was on the verge of having a tremendous orgasm right there on the dance floor.

They leaned into one another, their mouths opening in preparation for a deep, sensual kiss, when the pressure of the vibration in Emily's panties increased dramatically, almost painfully, jarring her out of the moment as she looked over at Spencer.

Who did not look happy.

Emily kissed the woman on the cheek, feeling her disappointed eyes following as she retreated from the dance floor and returned to the table, the vibrations ceasing completely. "What was _that _about?" she demanded, throwing her hands up in frustration.

"I thought you wanted to be with me," Spencer nearly whined, tracing the rim off his shot glass with one long finger.

"What? Are you crazy? I do! Of course I do!"

"Then what was ... that?" Spencer spat, gesturing toward the dance floor, hurt reflected in his deep eyes.

"It was for you," she said quietly, her eyes fixed on her lap. "I thought it would ... excite you." Her lower lip trembled as she thought, _Nice one, Emily. Way to forget that Spencer isn't just any regular guy who can be so easily seduced by watching you with another woman. Way to forget that he isn't just any regular guy, period, and that this is the entire fucking reason you're madly and hopelessly in love with him._

"_You _excite me, Emily," Spencer responded emphatically, reaching under the table to stroke her knee.

She inhaled sharply and wondered aloud, in a low husky voice, "Do you think it's possible for someone to become so wet that these panties ended up malfunctioning?"

Genuine concern crossed his face as he considered it, musing, "I suppose it's physically possible. In the presence of any viscosity, the controls may stop working or there could be an electric shock of some sort."

Emily nodded in understanding and took two more shots of vodka, pretending to listen to his Physics tirade. "I mean, the worst case scenario," he continued, "is that the entire contraption could short-circuit. Depending on how much liquid was present, of course."

"Oh god, so much liquid, Spencer," she half-moaned, gripping his wrist under the table and spreading her legs so he could feel the sticky wetness on the inside of her upper thighs. "Do you feel it?"

He swallowed hard and nodded.

"I'm afraid it could be a safety risk." Emily widened her long-lashed eyes innocently, her girlish tone exaggerated, flirtatious. "Whatever shall we do about it?"

Spencer stood up and, finding her slightly unsteady on her feet from the alcohol, held her hand to lead her toward the back room. Emily knocked three times on the door and, when no sound was heard, twisted the knob and marched inside. She'd never been inside of it before, always feeling safer to fuck strangers in the open, with an escape route, but she'd never felt safer with anyone than she felt with Spencer. And, this time, she didn't want an escape route.

It was a small, simple room, and aside from the mirrors covering every inch of the walls, even the ceiling, it could have easily been mistaken for a typical Parisian bedroom. Spencer closed the door behind them and approached her from behind, brushing her raven hair to the side and kissing her sweetly on her neck and her shoulder. When Emily leaned back into him and felt how hard he was, she spun around and growled, "I want you inside of me. Now."

He didn't have a chance to respond because in one swift move she was roughly unbuttoning and unzipping his pants, pulling them along with his briefs down to his ankles, her hand encircling the bare skin of his cock, which was certainly as long as she'd imagined but, given his lean torso and limbs, so much thicker than she'd anticipated.

Spencer groaned as she pulled off the vibrating panties and raised her dress above her hips with one hand, gently squeezing him with the other, and stood on her toes to slide his cock against her damp slit, pressing the tip against her clit and rotating her hips, little cries of pleasure escaping her throat.

"Wait -" Spencer cried out, alarmed. "Condoms ..."

"I just had my three-month birth control shot and I've been tested for everything," Emily said, whirling around to push him onto the bed. "And I want to _feel _it when you come inside of me."

Before he could protest, she was on top of him, gripping him with her hand as she slowly lowered herself down to the base of his cock, savoring the fullness of him inside of her and the way his eyes rolled back in pure, uninhibited bliss as he felt her wet heat gripping him for the first time. Immediately, and without any foreplay, she began to thrust her body up and down his shaft. It wasn't quite the romantic lovemaking she'd fantasized about, but the unrelenting throbbing throughout her body, this animalistic frenzy of arousal, was already too intense to subdue any longer.

When Emily leaned back, tilting her head upward to watch them in the mirror, she saw him reach out for her clit, his finger rapidly encircling it, as he met her hard thrusts with his own, his hips slamming upward against her until her legs were trembling against his thighs. God, she was so close already, torn between wanting to make it last and needing to come, trying to fight the rising wave building from deep inside of her - and then he rasped, "Come for me, Emily. I want to feel you come ... I'm so hard for you ... I want to feel your tight cunt come against my hard cock. Come for me, Emily ... Please, come for me."

Those words sent her over the edge and she rode him to a powerful orgasm, shuddering violently, over and over and over again, her inner muscles squeezing him and her hot liquid trickling down his cock, incoherent sounds escaping her throat. When she couldn't take it anymore, she pushed his hand away and managed to breathe a simple "wow."

Spencer held her hips still against him and, awestruck, murmured, "That was beautiful."

"And now it's your turn," Emily smiled, leaning forward and pressing her hands against his chest for leverage as she tried to resume her quick and deep pelvic thrusting, looking at him with a quizzical expression when she realized that his grip was limiting her movements. It suddenly occurred to her that this may not have been his position of choice and she flushed. "I'm sorry, Spencer, I should have ... Do you want to be on top?" she asked, kissing him lightly and adding in a low voice, "Do you want to get on top of me and fuck me? Do you want to make me come underneath you while you fill me up with your -"

"Emily, I ..." he interrupted, shaking his head and sighing, a frown on his full lips, an apology in his honey-colored eyes.

She froze instantly.

"Emily, I can't - I can't do this." Spencer's eyes pleaded with her for some understanding but there was none to be found in her wounded, betrayed, disbelieving stare.

The tears came without warning. "I hate you," she sobbed, rising from the bed, the emptiness she felt as his half-hard cock slipped out of her only intensifying her anguish. "I didn't even want to _do _this! It was _your _idea!"

"I know," Spencer said quietly, almost helplessly. "I thought I was ready, but -"

"But what?" Emily snapped at him. "You're not a 15 year old girl staring out the window of a car and just waiting for it to be over. You're a 29 year old man with a woman who wants more than anything to be with you, really _be_ with you, to do more than just use you and get off. You know, I'm starting to think that you're never going to be 'ready,' Spencer." Smoothing her dress down to cover herself, one hand on the door, she declared vehemently, "And you know what else? I'm not going to sit around waiting until you are. Not anymore."

With that, she was gone.

By the time Spencer had zipped his pants and frantically pushed past the crowd to reach the outside of the discothèque, there was no sign of her. He looked over at Jacques hopefully but the bouncer merely shrugged his shoulders regretfully. "Some doves ... they cannot be living in cages. You understand?"

He understood.

Dejected, walking the streets back to the hotel, Spencer decided that he needed to confront Emily about the conversation he'd overheard between her and Garcia in the locker room the day before. He needed to reveal how aroused he had been after going down on her, how desperately he had wanted her on the plane. But mostly? He needed to tell her the real reason he kept preventing himself from losing control with her. He needed to tell her that he was terrified of falling in love with her because he was terrified of losing her all over again.

As he mentally rehearsed the conversation on those warm Parisian streets, Spencer didn't consider the possibility that Emily might not have returned to their room after fleeing the club.

Or that when he saw her the next morning, she'd be slumped against the hotel room door, covered in track marks, and perilously close to overdosing on drugs.


	9. Wounded or Healed?

Thump.

"Don't want breakfast," Spencer called out sleepily, his half-lidded chestnut eyes opening and squinting against the harsh sunlight filtering into the hotel room through the balcony's billowing white curtains.

Two softer thumps. An inaudible voice muttering.

"No breakfast!" he yelled again, annoyed.

Then the sound of something sliding against the door followed by another, louder thump.

Spencer Reid was in no mood for this. He'd been up half the night waiting for Emily to return when the combination of jet lag and exhaustion prompted him to fall into a deep slumber just as the sun was beginning to rise. _It's not like I _planned _to hurt her. She was the one who left without giving me a chance to explain myself. And she didn't even have the courtesy to call me and tell me she'd found another hotel room?_ he fumed as he stormed to the door, fully prepared to release his rage on the concierge._ Forget sex or love or even friendship ... What happened to professionalism, Emily? What happened to doing your fucking _job _as an FBI agent?_

Spencer flung open the door and gasped in shock when he found, laying at his feet, not a breakfast tray, but Emily - Emily, with her heavy eyes cloudy and unfocused, fragments of drool hanging from the left corner of her dry cracked lips, and fresh track marks on both arms.

Oh, god ... track marks?

Instinctively, Spencer tried to pull her up by her limp wrists but quickly discovered that he didn't have the strength to force her body into a standing position, instead opting to grab her by the waist and drag her along the carpet, allowing the door to slam once her feet crossed the threshold. "Emily?" he cried out, panic seeping into his voice as he kneeled down to place his hand over her chest and his ear next to her mouth, time itself ceasing to exist until he finally (oh, thank God, finally!) felt her heartbeat, faint and slow but present, accompanied by a shallow inhalation of breath.

"Spencerrrrr," she slurred, reaching out blindly until her cool, damp palm met his cheek, her head lolling against one of his socks. "I did some speedballs ... but I think ... I think they were maybe more 'ball' than 'speed.'"

Oh god. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

What Emily needed right now was an ambulance and some Narcan to displace the opiates from her system immediately. But not only were they not in a US state with a "Good Samaritan Law," the life-saving harm reduction measure prohibiting the local police from arresting or even searching anyone suspected of overdosing on drugs, they were in an entirely different country. A country that wouldn't hesitate to make an example out of an American FBI agent, a country that might even ramp up the charges to include drug trafficking, especially if the dealer with that ridiculous name - what was it? van Gogh? - was truly as protected as Emily had insinuated when she first told Spencer about him.

And yet Reid also knew that the reason speedballs are so dangerous is because cocaine clears a person's system more rapidly than heroin, sometimes masking a fatal overdose temporarily, until it's too late. What if it was only some of the residual cocaine keeping her alive right now? What then?

Spencer prayed to the god of junkies and addicts everywhere to forgive him for what he was about to do.

After grasping Emily's shoulders and propping her up against the nearest chair so she wouldn't asphyxiate if she vomited, Spencer frantically reached for her black purse and opened it, finding her leather wallet, an orange-capped syringe, and two small baggies of powder: one brown and smooth and the other white and clumped.

He removed the baggie with the white powder and dumped some of it onto the table. Administering cocaine along with heroin carried its own risks, but if Reid took Emily to the emergency room, her life would be over. She'd be prosecuted and arrested for something ... for something ...

_Go ahead and admit it already, Spencer, _he thought accusingly. _You know it's true._

... for something that was all his fault.

Peering over at Emily as she slumped against the chair mumbling to herself, Spencer resolved that if this didn't work, he'd call an ambulance. Although injecting her with cocaine would be the most effective method of administration, he knew he would never be able to break her pale skin and shoot her up, not when her arms were already so heartbreakingly marred by needle marks.

He pinched as much of the white powder as he could hold between his thumb and forefinger and carefully carried it over to her, shoving it up one of her nostrils and trying to hold it in place while instructing her desperately, "Sniff! Sniff hard!"

It took a few attempts for her to inhale deeply enough but she eventually managed, with some of the powder disappearing up her nose and most, to his dismay, dropping down onto her black dress. He tried again with the same results, finally realizing that if he pressed her other nostril closed with one finger, she'd inhale more of the powder that had long started to numb his fingertips. Later, Spencer would marvel at how he was capable of overcoming his inherent clumsiness in order to pull off such a feat, but in that moment he just prayed that she'd awaken from the half-comatose state she was in, prayed that she'd come back to him.

It took three more bumps of coke until Emily's eyes fluttered slightly and, much to his relief, he could - for the first time since finding her semi-conscious outside of their room - actually see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out.

The effect wasn't dramatic but Spencer wasn't aiming for dramatic. "Dramatic" could, paradoxically, result in a heart attack. It was enough to watch her struggle to focus her eyes, even though the sight of her pin-pricked pupils chilled him to the core. It was enough to witness her unsteadily clutching the side of the chair in an attempt to stand up, even though tears pricked his eyes when he had to leap forward and catch her to prevent her from falling over. It was enough to lead her gently to the bed and put his arm around her while she curled into his chest and mumbled "I feel so good right now," even though something shattered deep inside of him when he thought about how he could have prevented all of this if he'd only been honest with her.

If he'd only confessed that he'd overheard her in the bathroom with Garcia, if he'd only permitted her disclosure on the airplane instead of dismissing it as a meaningless phrase uttered in the throes of an orgasm, if he'd only admitted the real reason he was so afraid of losing control with her ... If he'd only been brave enough to tell her that he already knew.

If he'd only been brave enough to tell her that he was in love with her, too.

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As Emily drifted in and out of sleep, occasionally twitching against his chest, Spencer forced himself to stay awake and attuned to any changes in her heart rate or her breathing. After about four hours, both had nearly normalized and he felt comfortable enough to gingerly ease her head onto the pillow and rise from the bed, determined to dispose of the remaining drugs before she woke up.

The cocaine was easy. But when he held that syringe and that bag of heroin in his hand, he couldn't help pausing on his way to the bathroom, flicking his eyes over at Emily enviously and contemplating: _what if I did it just one more time ...?_

And then he heard Morgan's words ringing in his ears. _Reid, this isn't what Emily would have wanted for you. Imagine her looking down at you right now. You're _hurting _her, Reid. You're hurting her and she can't do anything about it. Is that what you want?_ followed by Emily's _don't you remember what _we _were like when you were using Dilaudid?_

Spencer remembered. Of course he remembered; his viciousness toward her during that time still made him cringe in shame. And Morgan, as always, was right: he didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to hurt her ever again.

"Goodbye," he declared emphatically as he flushed the beige powder, his voice echoing throughout the marble bathroom. Goodbye to taking the easy way out, goodbye to lying, goodbye to suppressing his emotions, goodbye to the protective shield he'd built around his heart.

Goodbye to all of it, and hello to ...

Emily.

She was sitting up in bed when he emerged from the bathroom, her stark black hair partially obscuring her face, tears freely falling from her eyes down onto the raised track marks in the crook of her elbow. As she traced the puncture wounds with one finger, the expression on her face sliced through him like a dagger. It was a mixture of incredulous disbelief and profound sadness.

It was an expression he recognized immediately.

It was, after all, the same one that Spencer had seen in himself when he looked in the mirror after coming down from his first Dilaudid high. The one that conveyed utter shock that it had really come to this but also an amazement that it had been so easy to go through with. The one that vowed never to do it again and at the same time wanted to do it again as soon as possible.

It took only a few tense moments until Emily sensed Reid's presence and crossed her arms to hide the tracks, her shadowy eyes scanning the velvet red comforter as though searching for the right words, as though searching for any words at all.

Spencer swallowed audibly and, ardently struggling to prevent his voice from quivering, told her, "I'm so sorry -"

_"You're _sorry?" she repeated, tucking her knees to her chest protectively as she turned her face toward the wall so she wouldn't have to look at him. "I stayed out all night shooting coke and dope and _you're _the one who's sorry?"

It was now or never.

Spencer sat down on the opposite edge of the bed, his lanky fingers dancing against his gray sweatpants, as he craned his neck sideways, speaking to the back of her tangled messy hair. "I'm sorry because it's my fault. Because ..." he closed his eyes, wincing, and decided to start with the easiest confession. "Because I didn't tell you that I ... um, I ... I made myself come three times in the bathroom after you went to sleep on the plane. Because I lied about the real reason I couldn't ... I mean, um, wouldn't ... do that with you. Because ..."

Before Spencer could unburden himself with the revelation that he knew she was in love with him and admit to her that he felt the same, he heard the sheets rustle behind him and felt Emily's coaxing hand on his shoulder. Startled, his eyes flew open, trying to decipher the strangled mixture of emotions breaking through the dulled surface of her facade. He desperately wanted to finish speaking, to stop the lying and pretending once and for all so they could have a real chance at fixing all the damage they'd done to each other and to themselves, but he stopped cold when she interrupted his monologue with one single solitary word, her flat affect revealing a small tinge of forlorn hope: "Wouldn't?"

Spencer instantly understood the tacit implication hidden behind that simple question and his guts clenched up like he'd swallowed a bowling ball. She honestly believed that he didn't really want her. That he was just doing her some kind of favor. That he felt compelled to give into her sexual advances and ignore her admissions of love as a kind of trade-off to preserve their friendship.

"Did you think I didn't _want _you?" he inquired in disbelief, blinking his eyes in rapid succession.

Emily hesitated, tilting her head against the back of his shoulder. "I thought ... I thought that maybe your ... your response to me was just a ... a kind of involuntary physical reaction since you had never ... never been with anyone before." She looked away, ashamed. "But I realized last night that you don't want me, not really. With your body, yes, but not ... not with your mind, your heart. And that's why you couldn't ... why you can't let yourself come. Not with me."

"No, Emily, no ... That's not it at all," Spencer insisted emphatically.

He could tell that she didn't believe him at all and, holding out his hands helplessly as he pivoted his body toward her, he began to ask, "What can I do to ... ?" but the question trailed off and disappeared into the air as she scooted over to the edge of the bed next to him and started to pull off his pajama pants.

"You can prove it," she offered, meeting his hazel eyes in a kind of challenge before dropping to her knees in front of him and taking him in her mouth.

Spencer's first instinct was to protest, to ask her to wait until he could tell her the real reason he was so afraid to let go with her, to verbalize his fear of falling even deeper in love with her only to lose her all over again. And then he remembered the whole point of "Friday Night Fix-It Night": to fix their friendship. And no matter what he said in words, he knew that Emily would never believe him unless he said it with his body first. He breathed in deeply and reminded himself how many times he had dreamed about this, fantasized about this, wished for this. Reminded himself that he'd almost lost her _because _he wouldn't permit himself to let go with her. Reminded himself that she was his first real love and his first real kiss and that he wanted her to be his first real everything, that he couldn't continue living in fear of losing her at the expense of never having her at all.

He watched as she sucked him, the insecure yearning evident in her vulnerable eyes even when he began to tremble and grow harder in her mouth. Spencer had never felt a woman's lips on him there, and the things she was doing to him were unimaginable. He was finally allowing himself to feel pleasure without relying on the controlled restraint he had practiced throughout his life, without the well-constructed mental barriers he had built over the years to suppress his sexual needs. Those barriers hadn't just been broken the second she took him in her mouth ... they had been completely demolished.

When Emily took him in her hand and used her tongue to apply pressure to his sensitive underside, he couldn't suppress the pleading whine emanating from his chest or slow the continuous trickle of pre-come dripping down his ever-stiffening cock and onto the floor. The moment that she relaxed her throat muscles and swallowed his entire length while making a humming sound, coordinating her deep sucking with the movement of her fist enclosed around the base of his cock, though, was the moment that Spencer had to clench his fists tightly underneath him, the frantic need for release fast approaching.

As she continued to suck him, Emily kept her needy eyes trained on his face, clearly doubting that he would allow her to take him to that place, clearly not knowing how close he was to losing control, clearly unaware that it could happen within seconds. And as much as the thought of spewing come down her throat excited him, Spencer resolved that he didn't want it to be like that, not the first time, not with her. "I need you up here," he growled, in a voice not quite his own. "I need to see you. I need to _feel _you."

One last time, Emily drew her mouth down his shaft with those supple, pouty lips before standing up and straddling him. Unsteadily, she lowered herself down onto his lap and grasped him in her hand, prepared to guide him inside of her. Just as he felt her damp slit glide against his stiff cock, though, Spencer flipped her over so she was laying beneath him and climbed on top of her. "Like this," he whispered, his breathing ragged. "Is it OK if we do it like this?"

She nodded eagerly, almost hopefully, in response. And although she was wet when he entered her, Emily didn't seem at all prepared when he pressed his hands against her spread thighs as leverage to swiftly shove himself deep of her, filling her completely, a cat-like mew of surprise escaping her throat. Spencer pulled his face back so he could watch her, wanting more than anything to see something other than the guarded protected expression she'd been wearing since she first dropped to her knees, the one preventing him from reading her thoughts, her emotions. As he rocked himself against her in long, slow strokes, murmuring tender phrases under his breath, he finally witnessed the look on Emily's face changing as her cunt moistened and tightened around him. But it wasn't the look of someone needing to come. It was the look of someone needing to be loved.

If an orgasm was the first step in proving that love, then Spencer was very close indeed. Emily matched the increasing pace and force of his gyrations with her hips, sighing an appreciative "mmmm." And then she said, in a low moan, "Oh god, Spencer ... please fuck me ... oh, don't stop, don't stop fucking me ... I'm so hot and tight ... don't I feel so good? ... don't you want me to fuck your hard cock? please god don't stop ... don't ever stop fucking me ... oh god, oh Spencer ..."

He recognized her words instantly; they were a variant of the phrases he'd uttered while jerking off in the bathroom on the plane. Hearing Emily's sultry voice repeating them now was so erotic he could only manage to groan in response, the need to come only a few moments, a few thrusts away.

Spencer had to say it now, before he lost control.

He forced himself to hold his body still against hers and the words emerged from his mouth so quickly - "I'm in love with you, too, Emily" - that they didn't seem to register with her, because in an instant he was driving himself into her again and again and again, his cock buried deep inside of her where she was so tight, so hot, so wet, her whimpers and cries encouraging him as he felt the impending orgasm building in his groin; the sheer need, not hampered by any resistance, overtaking him suddenly and unexpectedly.

Spencer barely managed to grunt "I'm coming" before his entire body became numb and paralyzed except for his cock, the cock that throbbed so violently he nearly screamed as it released its first long powerful stream of fluid, the cock that pulsated with such force he held his breath as it propelled jet after jet of come from his body. The cock that left him helplessly grimacing and groaning as he came and came and came, the rest of the world - even Emily's gorgeous, loving, perfect face - receding into a fading blurry haze. The cock that continued to stir and twitch in exquisite release until the very last trickle escaped, until it eventually became limp and Spencer collapsed, spent, as, coated in sticky wetness, it slipped out of Emily's warm damp heat, followed by an unbelievable gush of ejaculate dripping from her body and pooling on the sheets between her legs.

Several minutes passed before Spencer felt strong enough to roll over to the other side of the bed, staring up at the ceiling in a daze, his entire body still tingling from the aftershocks. It had been worth waiting twenty-nine years to feel this. It had been worth waiting twenty-nine years to feel this with _her_.

Emily suddenly came into focus above him and, pushing the sweaty brunette strands of hair away from his forehead with her bitten fingertips, she implored, "Look at me, Spencer."

"I'm looking," he exhaled heavily, reaching his hand out to grasp the back of her head, wanting her now more than ever, wanting to kiss her and hold her, wanting to crouch between her legs and lick her until she came, wanting to try all of the positions in the Kama Sutra and then do it all over again. And again. And again.

"Wait, Spencer," she said, surprising him by resisting, tears springing to her eyes and her voice breaking as she uttered his name. "What did you mean ... what did you mean when you said you're in love with me, _too?"_

He gulped audibly.

It was time.

It was time to find out if they could fix it once and for all.


	10. Fixed?

Something about the way Emily's question was worded - "what do you mean, you're in love with me, _too?" _- caught Spencer off-guard. It didn't make sense that she'd emphasize his acknowledgment of her love for him rather than focus on his unprecedented admission of being in love with her.

Suddenly, confessing to eavesdropping on Emily's conversation with Garcia from the bathroom stall in the locker room at the BAU didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

Spencer reached for her, wanting to interlock his fingers with hers, craving some kind of tender physical contact after the highly emotional experience of his first ever orgasm with another person, but Emily harshly pulled her hand away and scooted backward to the edge of the bed, out of his reach, leaving him feeling empty and alone and unbearably, desperately vulnerable.

"Wait, are you telling me you're _not _in love with me?" he asked, unsuccessfully trying to prevent the raw tinge of pain from resonating in his voice.

Emily cocked her head to the side, her black hair falling over one shoulder. In her constricted pupils, he could still see those unnerving opiate-induced traces of emotional disconnection, of detachment from reality. Spencer knew instantly that if he engaged in this discussion with her before she was fully herself again, it could prove disastrous for both of them.

And then the painful realization diffused in his consciousness like an IED explosion. _If Emily's not herself right now ... then who did I just have sex with?_

"I never said I wasn't in love with you," she stated matter-of-factly, her unblinking charcoal eyes trained on him. "I'd just like to know when you figured it out. Or, precisely, how long you made me suffer before you stopped being such a pussy."

Just as Spencer was about to reply with a carefully-edited version of the truth, they both heard the muffled sound of Emily's cell phone ringing in her "go bag". "Hotch," Emily whispered to herself, a look of terror crossing her face as she jumped off the bed to grab it before the ringing stopped. Hotch _loathed _missed calls; no matter whether you were shampooing your hair in the shower or dining in a quiet elegant restaurant or on the verge of having an unprecedented mind-blowing orgasm, you were still expected to answer that phone when it rang.

Every BAU agent had a favorite "I missed Hotch's call because ..." story and all secretly kept a running tally of who had missed the most calls and why; it was just another unspoken competition designed to rank their own job performance against that of their team members. At one point, Reid even created a program to "grade" them based on the amount of time spent working with the BAU, the total number of missed calls, and the validity of the reason for the missed call.

The last variable was, of course, subjective and Morgan protested each time he was given a "completely inexcusable" rating for "being in the middle of sex." Reid would definitely be amending those to "entirely understandable" upon his return to Quantico.

Emily wondered where an excuse _like the phone was still in my "go bag" because, instead of working the case I was assigned, I fucked Spencer in the back room of a club and then spent the night IV'ing drugs _would land her on the spectrum.

"I haven't spoken to him since we arrived," Spencer called out from behind her as she frantically pawed through her personal items to locate the phone. "He's probably just checking in."

Despite the reassurance that Spencer hadn't called their boss when she disappeared without explanation or when she'd returned in a near-overdose, Emily was still obviously anxious as she grasped her iPhone in her hand, momentarily turning her makeup-smeared face toward the ceiling, closing her eyes, and taking in a deep ragged breath before pressing the "answer" button and barking out, "Prentiss."

Her ability to maintain a steady tone even with her entire body visibly trembling was, Spencer considered as he observed her, either impressively professional or extraordinarily pathological.

"I was just about to call you with an update, sir," she lied smoothly. "Based on the tracking information that Garcia provided, I've managed to locate Mand- Amanda's circle of friends. She's visiting Germany at the moment but she's expected to return to Paris in two days. Sp- Reid and I will try to gain more information until we're able to question her directly."

Emily paused, her body stiffening and her mouth dropping open as she listened to Hotch on the other end of the line. "Are you sure?" she asked as she turned to face the wall, her body now quivering so hard she appeared almost epileptic. "But how can that be ... ? She was in Paris when ..." Another pause. "I ... I will certainly keep that in mind when we locate her, sir."

Spencer couldn't bear watching Emily standing there shaking like a cornered miniature pincher for one more second. He rose to his feet and protectively encircled his arms around her waist, drawing her body into his and silently placing open-mouthed kisses against the side of her neck unimpeded by her cell phone. He couldn't hear what Hotch was saying but he recognized that muffled tone immediately; it was the severe, instructional voice their supervisor employed whenever there had been a break in the case and he was forced into a position of relying on other agents who he (or so they all suspected) didn't trust to do the job as well as he himself could.

"Understood, sir. I'll keep you in the loop," Emily intoned respectfully, moving the phone away from her ear to disconnect when Hotch hurriedly added something that Reid couldn't hear. "Garcia wants to know ... what?" she repeated, her free hand curling up to grab one of Spencer's arms, squeezing hard. "Yes, sir. Please tell her that her efforts to make us comfortable here have been greatly appreciated."

Emily hung up the phone and dropped it. Just dropped it on the floor. She twisted away from Spencer to face him, shaking her head in disbelief, the shocked confusion transforming into an almost helpless expression of agony as she spoke. "They think ... they think Mandy's the unsub."

_"What?" _Spencer exclaimed, repetitively brushing his golden hair behind his ears. "But that - that doesn't make sense. Mandy was here when the other murders occurred. How could she ... ?"

"With her boyfriend," Emily muttered in disgust. "Because of her high MCAT score, she was recruited by the Association of American Medical Colleges to double-check that every applicants' results were correctly sent to the medical schools they'd listed before taking the exam. The AAMC reported several IP addresses in France, all connected to Internet cafes, that accessed the site in the days preceding the official score availability date for applicants. And when Garcia cross-referenced those IP addresses with activity logs, she discovered that Mandy spent a lot of time focusing on test-takers in the Westchester area. The team thinks that she provided her boyfriend with a list of high-scoring applicants so he could check them out and, if they were the only daughters of divorced or widowed fathers, he'd ..." She drew in a ragged breath, her tearful eyes searching Spencer's. "Oh, my God. I spent half a year with her ... I called her my best friend ... How could I have missed something like this?"

"The same way we missed your connection to Ian Doyle," Spencer answered soothingly. "The same way I missed the signs that you were in love with me when you came back from Paris. The same way you missed the fact that I've been in love with you since ..." He stopped abruptly and blushed. Spencer had never admitted to anyone that he'd wanted Emily Prentiss for as long as he had or that the grief he'd suffered when he thought she was dead wasn't only grief over a friend or a colleague but grief over a love that might have been if only ... if only he'd permitted himself to tell her. If only he'd taken a chance on the possibility that she could ever love him back.

"Since when?" Emily asked gently, clasping his hands in hers and swinging them slightly back and forth.

"Since we talked about baby geniuses." His face lit up at the memory, a shy smile forming on his pale lips. "You know I've never wanted to have kids because of my mother, because of the chance that they might be genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. But when _you _asked me if I was thinking of having baby geniuses one day, I realized ... I realized that I was. That I was thinking about ... about having them with you."

A pink flush crept up Spencer's neck as he quickly added, "I don't - I mean, this isn't about ... I'm not trying to say ..." He took in a deep breath to organize his thoughts and temper the awkward stutter that always impeded his ability to communicate during emotional or difficult conversations. "What I'm trying to say is ... I also realized that you were 'out of my league,' as Morgan would say, both genetically and ... otherwise." He looked down, ashamed. "Because you are, you know? And if I was able to figure it out years ago, then what's going to happen when you figure it out, too?"

"You are un-fucking-believable," Emily stormed, her eyes flashing dangerously and sarcasm creeping into her voice as she pulled her hands away from him. "The next time you give a lecture on profiling, ask one of your eighteen year old Harvard groupies if they think you're not good enough for me. Better yet, show them more than just your pretty angel face and your intellect; show them how you'd care for them if their lives were in danger; show them how you'd give them the most intense, earth-shattering orgasms they'd ever had while denying yourself the same release until you were certain that their feelings for you were real; show them ..."

He cut her off midsentence. "I actually wanted to talk about that," Spencer interjected, staring down at her morosely. "When I ... when we were together earlier, I looked into your eyes and saw this - this heroin-affected version of you. And now I feel like you've had sex with me and I've had sex with you but ... but _we _still haven't had sex yet."

"Oh, Reid, just because I didn't come ..." Emily started to interrupt, her face crumbling.

"No, wait," he said, holding up one hand to silence her. "It's not about that. It's about ... it's about how I didn't feel connected to you when it was over. How I felt like there was this invisible glass barrier separating us. And now I know how you must have felt last night at the club. Only the barrier wasn't drugs; it was me. And when the drugs have left your system, I want to do it again. Because ... because I don't think you're ever going to leave my system, Emily."

The love light shined in her eyes for a brief moment before she began to gnaw on the inside of her cheeks, sneaking a glance at her purse on the floor. "And if it takes a while for the drugs to leave my system?"

"Your pupils have been progressively dilating and your breathing and heart rate, while accelerated during your phone call with Hotch, are only mildly elevated now. You're alert, engaged, and emotional. And your body temperature has changed; you're sweating slightly but you also have goosebumps." Spencer spoke as though he were presenting a case study, not because he didn't want to empathize with her but because his own struggle with opiates and his feelings about Emily's flirtation with those very same drugs were too difficult for him to manage. "The signs of slight nausea I thought might be related to finding out about Mandy still haven't remitted even though we've stopped discussing the case. So it's evident to me that you're beginning to feel mild withdrawal symptoms."

Emily slouched uncomfortably, pointedly refraining from gazing at her black purse on the white plush carpet behind him.

"Don't worry, with only one night of OxyContin use followed by one night of heroin use, your withdrawal symptoms will be so mild they won't even come close to resembling the kind of horror stories you hear from people with prolonged physical dependence on these drugs," Spencer continued. "It'll be more like a brief hangover after a weekend of binge drinking."

"Mmm-hmm," Emily responded noncommittally.

"And you can stop staring at your purse now, by the way. I already flushed the drugs."

"You _what?" _she snapped angrily, swirling around to stare daggers at him. "What fucking _right _did you have to go through my stuff? You, of all people! I had to practically kill myself to earn back your trust and ..."

"That's why," he interrupted, almost sadly.

"What? What's why?"

"That's why I went through your stuff. You nearly killed yourself with drugs last night, Emily. I found you slumped in the hallway, barely alive, and I knew if I did nothing you'd die but I knew if I called an ambulance your life would be over in a different way. So I chose to administer cocaine to counteract the effect of the heroin instead." Spencer furrowed his brow, tilting his head sideways. "You really don't remember any of this?"

"I remember ..." Emily's eyes scanned the ceiling as she struggled with her memory. "I remember Picasso giving me a hit and putting me in a cab. And then I remember ... being led ... I remember you leading me to the bed." She stopped and held out her arms to examine the multiple puncture wounds lining her veins. "So which one was yours?"

"I didn't inject it!" Spencer insisted, horrified." I shoved it up your nose. It took me a few tries before I figured out I had to hold one of your nostrils closed if I didn't want most of it to fall out onto your dress but I managed eventually."

Emily looked down at her black dress, noticing for the first time that it was covered with dried smears of white paste.

"And after a few hours of listening to your breathing and your heart rate, I was convinced you were stable enough for me to leave you in bed so I could flush the rest of the drugs in your purse." Spencer licked his lips, hesitant. "I- I almost couldn't flush the heroin. I almost shot it myself. But you know what stopped me?"

She didn't answer. Couldn't. How selfish was she, really, for putting Spencer's already-fragile sobriety at risk?

"You stopped me, Emily. Not just the fact that you'd almost overdosed but thinking about what Morgan said to me when you were gone, about how if I relapsed it would hurt you, about how you wouldn't have wanted that for me. Thinking about how you asked me if I remembered what we were like when I was on Dilaudid ... and thinking about how I would have used that OxyContin with you on the plane if you hadn't made the choice to flush it. How, at the time, I almost wished you wouldn't flush it because the drugs felt so close to me, so much closer to me than you ..." Spencer reached out for her, pulling her lithe body into his. "I don't want us to be like that, Emily. I don't want us to be in a place where something always needs to be ... _fixed _between us."

"I don't, either," she murmured softly, still stunned by his admission that the choice he had given her between flushing the Oxy or receiving a "massage" wasn't some kind of poker play, that he really would have snorted opiates with her ... and she was especially stunned by the idea that he'd truly believed, at the time, there was a chance she might have let him relapse. Invited him to relapse, really.

"We have two days until Mandy returns from Germany. Can you just please let someone take care of you for once in your life, Emily? Can you let me take care of you?" he implored, holding her body closer to his and kissing the top of her head.

Emily gave a barely-perceptible nod against his chest even though every cell in her body wanted her to protest that she didn't deserve this, didn't deserve _him, _not after everything she'd put him through ...

"Good," Spencer stated with finality. "Then let's start with a bath. Go lay down on the bed and I'll draw it for you."

"Yes, Doctor," she retorted, smiling gratefully through her sarcasm.

When he returned from the bathroom, he found her sitting on her knees and shifting on the bed in apparent discomfort. Alarmed, he immediately inquired, "Emily? Emily, what's wrong?"

"Um ... this is really weird and a little embarrassing but I feel ... I feel ..." She stopped midsentence and that's when he noticed she hadn't just been shifting her body on the bed; she'd been rubbing herself against it.

"You feel sexually aroused," Spencer observed in such a detached manner she found it unnerving.

"I ... uh, yeah," Emily conceded, avoiding eye contact. "But I wasn't even thinking about that! I swear! It just ... um ... it just hit me out of nowhere ... and ... and it's not only a little, either. It's incredibly ... It's ..."

"It's one of the only good things about opiate withdrawal," he offered, his mouth breaking into a wide grin. "Hypersexuality."

"Really?" she asked skeptically.

"Yep. And you're lucky."

"Why's that?" she half-groaned, still frustratingly trying to grind against the comforter.

"Because you just happen to be in the company of someone who, until today, had suppressed his sexual urges for twenty-nine years." The look on his face was practically mischievous. "In fact, I was just in the bathroom thinking that you might not be able to handle the sheer force and amount of ... release ... I'm going to need until I'm satisfied."

An erotic shudder passed through Emily's body at his drawn-out emphasis on the word "release," just as he knew it would.

With a smirk, Spencer casually ran one hand down his thigh, drawing her attention to the bulge in his pants. "Do you think you'll be able to give me a hand with that?"

Emily swiftly jumped off the bed and pressed her body against his, hard and furious, eliciting a low moan from deep within his throat.

It was her turn to smirk now. "Oh, Spencer ... I think I can give you more than just a hand."


	11. Renewed

She felt like a princess.

Sitting in a vanilla-scented bubble bath with Spencer slowly smoothing almond butter soap along her skin, kissing the track marks on the inside of her elbows, massaging shampoo into her scalp, and murmuring in a low voice, "This is the kind of thing I've always fantasized about ..."

"Washing my hair?" Emily laughed, closing her eyes as he gently tilted her head back to wash the shampoo out of her hair.

"No ... well, sort of ..." he responded evasively, rubbing away the last traces of makeup from underneath her eyes with a beige washcloth.

"Mmmm-hmmm?" She opened her brown eyes, feeling more naked in front of him without any mascara or lipstick or concealer than she'd felt when he unzipped her black dress and unhooked her bra, his eyes lingering on her body as she lowered herself into the tub. "Explain?"

"This is going to sound stupid," Spencer muttered to himself, turning his head to stare at the grey and white marble sink across the room.

Emily grabbed his thin wrist, her pink lips still turned upward in a smile. "It can't be nearly as stupid as insisting on giving me this - completely undeserved, I might add - spa treatment. Or as stupid as insisting that since you, the poster boy for sexual repression, were able control _your _urges during opiate withdrawal, I should also deny myself such instant gratification."

"They're kind of related, actually," he admitted, sneaking a glance at her.

"How?" she asked, cupping water in her palm and dropping it over her breasts, allowing a fingertip to linger over each of her raised pink nipples.

"Well ..." Spencer hesitated for a moment, his hollowed eyes scanning the floor as he searched for the right words to explain himself. "You know how we ... how we fucked earlier? At the club and here in the hotel?"

Emily laughed again, her voice a melodious chime echoing throughout the bathroom. "Oh, yes. Yes, I most certainly do."

"The thing is, Emily," he swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, "I never really fantasized about _fucking _you before."

Ouch. That hurt. Badly.

Hurt, she shoved his wrist away from her with such force he almost lost his balance and nearly fell off the side of the bathtub, barely steadying his body as she retorted icily, "So if you don't fantasize about me, what was all of that 'oh please fuck me, Emily ... fuck my hard cock ... you're so tight and wet ... keep fucking me, Emily, keep fucking me until I come' shit I overheard you moaning in the bathroom on the plane, then?"

"No, no, no, that's not what I meant!" Spencer ran his hand through his tangled hair, looking at her with that unbearable hurt puppy-dog expression on his face, the expression that conveyed a mixture of confusion and insecurity and stunned rejection, the expression that never failed to make her heart absolutely ache for him, and she felt her anger receding despite the residual sting of his words. "I _do _fantasize about you. Just not usually ... in that way. On the plane, I was so close to ... to losing control ... when I went down on you that I imagined the things you'd want to hear me say if we were together. But when I do ... give into those urges ... I don't fantasize about 'fucking' you but about ..." He bit his lower lip before blurting out, "about making love to you."

Emily's nipples noticeably stiffened and a throb of desire coursed through her body. "Tell me," she implored breathlessly, moving her hand down underneath the bathwater to draw light circles around her clit. "Tell me what you think about when you touch yourself."

"I -" He was mesmerized into silence by the barely-perceptible flick of her wrist and the mental image of what her fingers were doing underneath those bubbles.

"Tell me how it starts," Emily prompted, her voice a pleading whisper. "Tell me what happens on the day you can't control it anymore. Tell me what's ... different about that day."

"You're profiling me," he protested weakly. When she raised her eyebrows as if to ask, _so what?, _he gave in, his heart rate accelerating with anxiety as he prepared to disclose the specific details of his well-kept secret ritual, a ritual he'd never thought he'd share with anyone else. Especially not the very object of his fantasies. "OK. What's different is that ... once a month, I don't go to my regular Saturday night AA meeting. I reserve that night ... I reserve that night for you."

"You _schedule _the day you plan to masturbate?" Emily's eyes widened in disbelief.

"If I wait more than a month, I can't focus on anything and I stop being able to do my job. And a few times when I decided to let myself give in every time I felt the urge to do it, the proximity to you became too overwhelming and I - I wanted to do it all the time. I almost ... I almost lost control every time I _looked _at you."

Despite the shame in Spencer's voice, Emily shivered in delight. It astounded her that he really didn't seem to understand how incredibly arousing it was for a woman to hear that she could drive a man into a state of such sexual frenzy with her mere presence. "How long do you make yourself wait before you ... get started?"

"7:00 pm," Spencer replied immediately. "The exact time my AA meeting begins."

"'Saturday Night Self-Pleasure Night', huh?" Her laugh was almost a giggle, accompanied by her arm reaching up from out of the water to delicately caress the palm of his right hand with her damp fingers. "So it's 7 pm. What are you doing with this hand?"

"Nothing yet. I'm just ... I'm just laying in bed in my underwear and fantasizing ..." His voice trailed off and he leaned back against the cold marble beside the bathtub faucet to prevent his torso from brushing against the growing stiffness in his briefs.

"Fantasizing about what?" The way she worded her question was so innocent, and yet the gleam in her near-black eyes as she draped Spencer's hand over hers and submerged them both underwater so he could feel the motions of her finger as she stroked herself was anything but.

"First, I think about pleasing you. I imagine touching your ... your breasts and your stomach and your thighs with my fingers. And then with my mouth. It ... it's almost exactly like what I did on the plane, but I didn't expect - I didn't think you'd rush it like that. I thought you'd give me more time to ... to explore you."

"Mmmmm," she sighed, increasing the pace of her finger against herself for only a moment, moistening her lips with her tongue while struggling to resume a slower, more delicate tempo. "Did you imagine all of it? The ..." Emily blushed, her shoulders tensing involuntarily as she tore her gaze away from his, her guarded eyes fixed on the bubbles at the surface of the water. "The ... uh, the female ejaculation, I guess you'd call it ... Did you imagine that part, too?"

Spencer groaned at the memory, his cock visibly twitching through the cotton of his underwear. "Morgan told me once about girls who 'came so hard' - his words - that they urinated on him. He asked me if I was aware of any kind of rare medical disorder that could make a woman urinate during sex. I explained that in normal females, bladder activity is suppressed during sexual arousal and that there are theories about the ability of females to ejaculate when a certain area is stimulated. He promised to buy me coffee for a month if I could prove it to him. And when I'd finished reading about G-spot orgasms and asked him if the liquid smelled or tasted like urine, his answer confirmed my research and I was able to conclude that it must have been female ejaculation."

"Did ..." Emily stopped touching herself entirely, her eyes blinking back tears. "Did he react like Doyle did? Did he think it was disgusting?"

Reid shook his head emphatically, the words bubbling out of him. "Morgan was relieved! He said it was like 'bringing a girl into space to grab a shooting star' instead of 'showing her a shooting star from the earth.'"

"Oh, god," Emily rolled her eyes and smirked, the tension diffusing from her muscles. "Count on Derek Morgan to make it all about him. Did he really buy you coffee for an entire month?"

"No, of course not. But he gave me something better. He started watching all of these how-to videos after that and told me about one that had been done by a sex researcher for educational purposes where the test subject looked _exactly _like you, but younger." Spencer paused. "I asked him to show me. And he was right; she could have been your twin. I watched her face when she had a clitoral orgasm and then when she had her first G-spot orgasm on screen and the emotions there, combined with Morgan sitting right next to me and narrating what it actually feels like ... I ran to the bathroom and only barely managed to pull down my pants before I ..."

The story clearly excited Emily; she instantly resumed encircling her finger against herself, making a concerted effort to prolong her pleasure rather than surrender to the quick, rapid release her body craved.

"So do you want me to continue telling you about Saturdays?" Spencer wondered aloud, purposefully teasing her. He knew she did.

Emily didn't even bother to answer verbally. Just nodded eagerly, the uninhibited lust evident in her dilated pupils.

"I would be so ... so hard by then. Sometimes, especially in the few months after I first watched that video, I wouldn't even need to touch myself before I ..." He cleared his throat audibly. Never in his life did Spencer imagine that he'd find himself sitting next to the woman of his fantasies and providing a detailed description of those very fantasies with his hand resting on top of hers while she masturbated to his words.

Emily moaned softly, shifting her weight in the bathtub. "You came without touching yourself just thinking about what you wanted to do to me? You have _no idea _how hot that is."

"Really?" he squeaked. "Because it felt like ... Well, it felt like that time in college ..."

"That girl was a fucking idiot, Spencer," Emily interrupted vehemently, her eyes flashing.

"Like Doyle," he added quickly.

"Like Doyle," she quietly agreed, lifting her arm out of the water and gratefully kissing the back of his hand before again submerging it underwater.

Speaking rapidly to distract her from those awful memories, Spencer continued, "So then I'd think about you leaning over to touch me. Gently, barely moving your hand up and down. That's when I'd start to touch myself. I'd close my eyes and pretend it was your hand instead of mine. I'd ... I'd kiss the side of my left hand and imagine I was kissing your mouth. And I'd think about touching your breasts. I'd think about ... about holding them in my hand, about rubbing my fingers over your nipples. And my mouth, too. Licking them. I'd picture us turning sideways so we were pressed against each other and ... uh, dry-humping, I guess you'd call it ..."

"Except I'd be wet," Emily contributed in a throaty murmur.

"And after a while, you'd ask me ... you'd ask me ..."

"Will you make love to me, Spencer?" she whispered.

"Exactly. So I'd fantasize -"

"No," she interrupted, looking up at him from underneath her long, lowered eyelashes. "I'm asking you for real. Will you show me the rest of the fantasy instead of telling me? Will you make love to me, Spencer?"

CMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCMCM

After he'd washed away the residual bubbles from Emily's body using the removable shower head, making sure to linger between her legs for an extra moment before drying her off with a towel, Spencer grabbed her hand and led her toward the bed, pulling off his briefs. Emily watched him disrobe and settle down next to her, his sunken eyes staring up at the ceiling even as he turned his body toward her. She could sense his vulnerability about acting out the fantasy almost immediately, and those feelings were more than matched by her own. _What if I'm just going to ruin this for him instead of making it real? _she asked herself. _What if, after years of becoming so goddamn good at fucking, it turns out that I'm completely incapable of making love?_

Emily breathed in deeply and returned to the present moment, ignoring the insecurities of _what if ...? _as she focused on the evidence of Spencer's arousal and the physical desire pumping through her core. "So after the dry humping ... ?"

"I get on top of you," Spencer said. "But not inside of you. I just ... rub myself against you."

Emily turned slightly so her back was flat on the velvety sheets, legs spread apart, as Spencer climbed over her, supporting his weight with the left arm he positioned directly above her shoulder and the left knee he rested next to her thigh. She was more than ready for him when he took his cock in his right hand and began gliding it up and down against her, pressing against her clit with his tip for an agonizingly brief moment before sliding back down again. This seemed to go on for an eternity as they stared into each others' eyes and exchanged breathy, incomprehensible murmurs of pleasure.

Emily had to admit that even though he hadn't entered her yet, this felt more like making love than anything she'd ever experienced before. Eventually, though, she was so tormented by the throbbing between her legs that she absolutely had to give in, opening her mouth to beg for more. Just as she was about to speak, Spencer finally broke their silence, eerily in sync with her thoughts. "And then," he whispered, his breathing labored, "I just rub it against your ... um ... your ..."

"My clit," she groaned, supplying the word he was too self-conscious to say out loud.

He nodded gratefully and began to stroke circles around her clit with the tip of his cock, causing Emily to whimper and arch her body off the bed. "Oh my God," she cried out, her eyes closing involuntarily at how fucking good it felt. Why had none of her lovers ever done this to her before? "Oh, fuck ... Oh, Spencer, I think I'm going to -"

She grabbed his backside with both hands, gyrating her hips wildly to intensify the sensation, and when she opened her eyes again and looked down, the sheer eroticism of the image - his dick in hand, the tip wet with her moisture and his pre-come, grinding against her clit - sent her over the edge. The grunts and groans that escaped her throat were practically animalistic as she rode each throbbing wave of pleasure, shaking and trembling against him ... and just when she thought she was nearly spent, Emily glanced up at Spencer's face, a face so filled with fascination and satisfaction by merely watching her come, that it sent another orgasmic quake through her body: this one shorter but with more raw, thundering intensity. She actually had to bite down on his shoulder to prevent herself from screaming.

"Oh my God ..." Emily exhaled raggedly when her body collapsed against the bed, her arms resting listlessly against his back. Spencer kept his body still against hers while staring into those beautiful long-lashed eyes, now glimmering with a post-orgasmic shine. "Oh, Spencer ... That was ... unexpected."

"To you," he teased, leaning down to kiss her mouth. It seemed like forever since their lips had met that they kissed one another with such hunger, such wanton greed, it left Emily wondering whether it would be physically possible for her to come from kissing alone.

When they broke apart, she noticed the imprint of teeth marks she'd left against his shoulder blade and struggled to sit up underneath him, a disjointed river of apologies streaming from her lips.

Spencer "shhhh"ed her, easing her back down against the bed, and confessed, "Actually ... it felt kind of ... it felt kind of good." He was encouraged by Emily's abashed smile and her husky voice murmuring in his ear, "I should have warned you I'm a biter ..." as he resumed stroking his cock along her dripping slit, inhaling sharply when she continued, "... but only when I come so hard I can't stop myself."

Spencer was concentrating his movements against her entrance now, allowing her molten heat to coat his tip and underside, his fingertips teasing her labia, knowing that if he pushed himself deep inside of her right now, he wouldn't be met with any resistance at all.

"Spencer ..." Emily pleaded, shuddering each time his tip grazed the bottom of her over-sensitive nub. "Spencer, please ... I want to feel you inside of me."

He paused.

"Please, you only have to put it in a little bit ... I just need to feel you inside of me ... Not all the way ... Just a little," she begged. _I may not know how to make love, _Emily thought to herself triumphantly, _but I sure as hell know how to roleplay_.

"Just a little," Spencer warned, a glint in his chestnut eyes, and Emily knew she'd acted the part perfectly, relying on both her profiler's instinct and her intuitive understanding of Spencer's concept of "making love" - a concept she'd once believed in herself, so many years ago.

When he slipped the tip of his cock inside of her, withdrawing completely before slipping it in again, Emily spread her thighs wider, desperate to feel him fill her with his length, unable to prevent herself from scooting down on the bed and lifting her hips to try and force him to stop prolonging the inevitable and just _fuck _her already. "M-more?" she gasped. "A little more?"

"OK," Spencer agreed with a small sigh, as though resigned to her request. _It's like losing my virginity all over again, _Emily realized suddenly. _Or ... it's like what I wish it had been like to lose my virginity. _It was one of those thoughts that made her feel profoundly fortunate yet unbearably sad at the same time. Fortunate because, at nearly forty years old, she was finally experiencing the kind of "loss of virginity" she'd envisioned in the years before becoming sexually active. Sad because there had been so many people - too many people, really - who had tainted her innocent ideals about sex as an expression of love.

Spencer was halfway inside of her now, slowly pushing himself in and then nearly withdrawing in a slow and steady rhythm. "Does that feel good?" he asked in a throaty growl.

"Mmmmmm," Emily responded, almost unable to bear the sensation any longer. "I want to ..." She stopped, hesitant, unsure if this would fit into his scripted fantasy.

"You want to touch yourself?"

It was like Spencer was reading her mind. "Yes." She nodded vigorously, adding tentatively, "and I want to feel you ... all of you ... inside of me. Is that ... ?"

Before she could finish her question, Spencer thrust deep inside of her, gently, still moving his body against her in a way that reminded her, oddly, of a tide ebbing and flowing at the shore. Emily moved her hand down between them and encircled her clit with her forefinger. Her strokes, unlike his, were pressured and rapid.

"Tell me when you're close," Spencer breathed, his face inches from hers. "I want to come with you."

Emily knew that now was not the time to explain to him that it was nearly impossible for two people to synchronize their orgasms so she just leaned up and kissed him, allowing the feeling of his soft mouth pressed against hers and his warm tongue lapping against her own to enhance the pure sensuality of the moment. When he sucked on her lower lip, she opened her eyes and saw the same need that was pulsating through her body reflected in his stare.

With her finger moving at a rapid fire pace and her pussy tightening against him, she moaned, "Spencer, I'm close ..."

To her surprise, he didn't increase the pace of his body against hers, didn't slam into her with the kind of desperate force of a man on the verge of an orgasm, but continued his long, measured strokes as she began to come ... the throbbing sensation in her clit less abrupt, less sudden, less violent than usual ... more like a gradual take-off into the sky than a rocket propulsion ... and then Emily felt him throb inside of her, the warm spurts of ejaculation matching his timed thrusts against her, prolonging her own orgasm as they stared into each others' eyes ... the experience so uniquely intimate, the connection so unlike anything she'd ever experienced during sex. She felt like their very souls had somehow combined and had to force her eyes closed at the sheer intensity of it.

Spencer's final shudder was in time with her own and, after easing himself out of her, still remained on top of her as he covered her lips, her neck, her cheeks, her eyelids with light fluttering kisses and murmured, "I love you. I love you so much, Emily."

Gradually, she opened her eyes. "I ... I don't know what just happened, Spencer ... I've never ..." Emily smiled, a bright and grateful smile that lit up her entire face. "I've never - I've never felt anything like that before." The smile faded and her expression turned serious. "I love you and I'm in love with you and I ..."

The teardrops had already started to spill from her dark eyes when she swallowed hard, stroking his hollowed cheek with her palm, preparing to say the very words that she swore to herself a long time ago she'd never again utter to another human being, not after what those words cost her once, in a very distant corner of a very distant past she kept locked up tight in her heart. "And I'll love you for as long as we both live."


	12. Flashed Back

**Flashback: Freshman Year of College, 1989**

"Laleh, I'll love you for as long as we both live."

"And I you, Emily. And I you."

Those jade green eyes. Matching twin gemstones with flecks of hazel. The eyes of a Persian cat. "Purr for me, my Persian cat," Emily would murmur, sucking on her earlobes and kissing heart-shaped patterns along her neck.

And purr she would. Deep throaty purrs of desire and longing. Laleh never came in English, only Farsi. And aside from the scattering of erotic and loving phrases uttered during those exquisite moments of bliss, Emily never did become fluent in her lover's language, in the language of Iran.

They had been drawn to one another instantly on the very first day of their first-year International Studies class, when, during a lull of silence following their prominent Yale professor's tirade against Islamic extremism, Emily boldly stood up and accused him of religious bias, proceeding to mesmerize the class with stories of her travels throughout Middle Eastern countries and her first-hand experiences with the nuances and practices of different local Muslim cultures.

Afterward, trembling, Laleh had approached Emily to thank her for speaking up. An instant bond was forged between the two girls, the Iranian who had lived a life of privilege and felt an all-too familiar lack of identity due to her own multicultural upbringing resulting from her father's diplomatic status, presently marginalized by the overwhelming on-campus support for the Reagan and Bush policies in the Middle East, and the American who had spent her childhood and adolescence representing a country that she couldn't, from the inside, fully understand or even entirely recognize.

It had all started out so innocently.

Doesn't it always, though? Start out innocently?

It took almost half a semester of thighs touching for a moment too long, hands brushing and then abruptly withdrawing, lingering sidelong glances colored by blushing faces turning away, and countless days that Emily spent staring into those brilliant emerald eyes, with any premise of "getting together to study" quickly falling away.

The first time ... thinking about the first time still gave Emily chills, even twenty years later. They were both in her dorm room: a single, thanks to her mother's insistence that it would help her to focus on her studies instead of "partying with hooligans and nobodies." If Emily's mother ever could have envisioned the privacy, the boldness, the initiative to act on her feelings for Laleh afforded to her by that single room ... Well. Those unspoken accusations would come later. After all the ugliness.

That night, they'd smoked some Moroccan hashish Laleh's brother had brought to her on a recent visit. It was far more potent than the locally-grown marijuana Emily had been smoking occasionally throughout the semester and, as the world swirled around her, she was forced to lay down on the bed next to her friend, her porcelain arm practically sparking against Laleh's olive skin. Emily made a lame joke about how it was a good thing they were in America, where drug use wasn't punishable by death.

What happened next would be seared into her brain forever.

Laleh turned to her, their faces only inches apart, and whispered, "In Iran, there are many things that are punishable by death."

"Like what?" Emily had asked nervously, a chill running up her spine.

"Like two girls laying together on a bed."

"Even innocently?" she'd wondered aloud.

"Even innocently," Laleh confirmed. It was then that she slid her body against Emily's, their legs intertwining as they slowly gyrated together, knees moving up to press against groins, neither daring to use their lips or their hands, just continuing to rub their bodies together in a breathy, warm, synchronized dance.

When Emily came against Laleh's knee, she saw green.

Before meeting Laleh, she had never considered the possibility that she could be anything but straight. Careful grooming for a life in the political spotlight didn't permit such considerations.

And yet her only consideration at that very moment was that she wanted Laleh in a way she'd never, ever wanted anyone else before.

Driven by such profound longing, such uninhibited desire, Emily found herself reaching underneath Laleh's flowing skirt, tracing her fingertips along those damp panties before moving them aside to touch Laleh's clit, drawing the same circles she'd drawn against her own so many times before, kissing the open mouth next to hers again and again and again until Laleh cried out and tensed against her, the convulsions shaking the bed so hard that it creaked with each new wave of pleasure ... until Emily herself began to throb anew with thoughts of tasting where her fingers were so relentlessly stroking ...

Emily didn't know until after the shudders had ceased that it had been Laleh's first orgasm.

It would most certainly not be her last.

In retrospect, it always amazed Emily that neither fully knew what they were doing, not really, and yet it was nothing like the awkward and even painful fumbling attempts at sex she'd experienced with boys in the past. It was gentle and it was tender and it was sweet.

Maybe it was the newness of it all that made it what it was, what it would become. Maybe it was the first time either of them had ever genuinely considered that a love like this could indeed exist beyond the realm of fiction and poetry. Or maybe it was just two girls who were desperate to forage a homeland out of a distant but shared past that offered so much land and yet so little home.

After all, by the time she'd enrolled at Yale at the age of eighteen, Emily had already traveled most of the world. And yet. And yet.

And yet when the last of their clothing had been discarded onto the paneled wood of the floor, Emily declared that she'd never set her eyes on a land nearly as beautiful as Laleh's body.

Exploring it was much like being in a foreign country for the first time. The country itself holds no expectations; the sand and gravel and sea demand nothing and invite anything. It was why she always quietly disappeared from Jerusalem to walk through the olive groves and farmland, usually only able to enjoy a few hours of true peace before she was "rescued" by a hysterical IDF detail who would scold her for endangering her life merely by wandering into Palestinian territory, especially when the Old City of Jerusalem had so many sites to offer.

No, Emily had never been impressed by landmarks or monuments before: not until she encountered Laleh's soft unkissed lips, those full brown breasts with their pointed dark nipples, that damp matted pubic hair hiding grooves and folds and an engorged, visibly pulsating treasure. And she could explore anything she wanted.

Well, almost anything. After all, every country has its borders - some visible and some not.

Laleh's border was inside of her, and it had been so well-constructed over the years that when Emily's natural talent for linguistics left Laleh sobbing out moans and arching her back to push harder against Emily's tongue, any attempt to enter her with a finger resulted in an immediate clamping of knees against head and a breathless insistence that this barrier could not be crossed, that only a man with a matching ring on his finger could ever be granted a visa to that slick, wet, innermost place.

Emily understood. That first night, that first dizzying foreign first night, Emily understood. Much in the same way she understood that this, like her previous travels to various countries with her Ambassador mother, could only serve as a temporary stop-over, could never be the site of her final destination.

That first night.

How many "first nights" did they have? How many "last nights"? Emily had stopped trying to count long ago. One night, they just gave in, they gave up, they finally understood that all of the sworn declarations that "this night will be the last night" would, like previous agreements, be broken within days.

They started writing notes to each other during class instead of paying attention to the professor.

_I can still taste you on my tongue. I want to get underneath the table and taste you now. Love, L_

_You left your panties in my room last night. On purpose? Came so hard this a.m. only minutes after putting them to my nose. Real thing after class? Love, Em_

_You make me so wet. Hearts, L._

_You make me wetter. I need you. - Em_

_I need you more. I wish I could have you now. Love you, L._

_I can't stand it. I'm throbbing so hard. Let's leave early and go back to my room? Please? I love you, Em_

_You leave first. I'll meet you in 5 minutes. Can't wait. I love you too, L._

Without Laleh, Emily knew she would have breezed through her classes with straight-As. The addictive need to be with her constantly, though, left her with a C average. And, of course, by now, she was anything but "straight."

The night that everything changed would always be remembered by Emily as both the first and the last night. It was the night before both were scheduled to leave campus for winter break, a month-long separation that (at the time) seemed unbearable. Later, Emily promised herself that it would always and forever remain her first and last and night. That it would remain the only night in her life that truly mattered.

It was the night they swore their love to one another and exchanged rings. In Emily's case, the ring that had been passed down after generations of failed marriages and, for Laleh, the plain gold band she was supposed to wear around her neck as a reminder of maintaining her purity.

It was too large for Emily, meant to be given as part of a dowry to the man Laleh would one day be arranged to marry, so she slipped it onto both her ring and pinkie finger as they both promised to love one another until death. They kissed and touched and rocked their bodies together ... and then Laleh spread her legs and whispered, "Make me yours."

Emily was careful, remembering how painful it had been when she'd broken her own hymen with a tampon years before. She gently pressed one finger into Laleh, withdrawing slightly when she felt the physical resistance there, repeating the same light movement over and over until Emily's fingers were soaked with Laleh's ever-flowing droplets of arousal. Knowing she'd have to forcefully push to break it once and for all, she put her mouth on Laleh's clit and sucked hard, hoping to distract her from any pain she might feel when it broke.

The shuddering began within moments and Emily winced as she drove two fingers deep into her lover, the sudden sharp sting of it mixing with - or inducing? - a second wave of orgasmic pleasure. She tasted a tinge of blood as, for the first time, she felt Laleh's warm, coated, striated muscles tightening and releasing against her fingers. Emily couldn't stop herself from moaning at the incredible sensation, the intimate closeness. She understood, for the first time, why every time she came with Laleh's fingers inside of her, Laleh would shiver and quake with delight.

They made love all night. They came together as though they were one, their love-struck eyes remaining locked even as the intensity of each climax racked their bodies with fierce, violent tremors. They exchanged those vows of loving each other for as long as they both lived over and over again. They kissed until their lips felt raw; they touched and licked and sucked one another until the stimulation left them so sensitive they were nearly numb. Finally, at daylight, exhausted, they crawled up to the pillows and kissed with the desperate fervor of lovers anticipating their imminent separation before holding each other in a tight embrace, for "just a few minutes" until they had to depart: Laleh to the airport where she would meet her father before returning to Iran and Emily on a train only several hours away to DC where she'd spend a week, at most, with her mother before facing three additional weeks alone in that large quiet house where even the servants felt more like furnishings than like humans.

It was the first, the last, the only time they hadn't been careful.

Emily would spend the next twenty years wondering how her life might have turned out differently if they had.

When they awoke, it was to screams. Emily's mother. Laleh's father. Both standing in the doorway staring down at the nude intertwined figures of their only daughters. Shocked by the exchanged rings featured prominently on their fingers, horrified by the visible and unmistakable dried stain of blood on the bed from when Emily had penetrated Laleh, repelled by the overpowering feminine scent of sex lingering in the air, both parents stepped back into the hallway and slammed the door shut as they conversed in low voices, leaving Emily and Laleh only a moment to hastily find their clothing and exchange terrified glances, unable to speak.

When they opened the door, they were met only with the stoic face of Elizabeth Prentiss. "It has been decided," she remarked coolly, "that this - this _incident _- shall be forgotten and never spoken of again. Laleh, you are to go downstairs to your father's car immediately so that he may take you to the nearest plastic surgeon who can repair what my daughter did to you. You will then take a plane back to Iran, where a marriage will be arranged for you, before there is even the smallest chance that any gossip regarding your conduct in the States renders you unsuitable for a proper husband. You may continue your studies at the University of Tehran if your husband permits. You are never to see, speak to, or otherwise contact my daughter again. Is that understood?"

Laleh was in shock. They both were. Of course, they knew the consequences would be severe but ... but this?

Numbly, avoiding Emily's pleading eyes, Laleh nodded.

"And you'll give those rings back now, please. They're going to require some intensive cleaning before they're suitable for proper use again."

Emily's fingers brushed against Laleh's as they returned the rings they'd exchanged less than twenty-four hours earlier. There was a jolt, a spark as they touched that caused both girls to jump unexpectedly, their eyes meeting to confirm that the other had felt it, too.

"You may be dismissed, Laleh. Please have your father call me so I can formally apologize for any damage my daughter has done to you." Ambassador Prentiss snapped her fingers and Laleh stepped back, startled, as she unsteadily made her way to the stairwell.

Emily couldn't help herself. Laleh may never have considered disobeying an authority figure in her life, but Emily had spent eighteen years practically making an art out of it. "Wait!" she cried, sidestepping her mother's attempt to restrain her, running toward the stairwell.

She looked into those green Persian eyes one last time and repeated the vow she'd made. "I will love you as long as we both live," she declared boldly, her voice echoing down the empty corridor. Laleh turned her head so the Ambassador couldn't see her mouthing "and I, you" in response. When Emily leaned into Laleh to kiss her, she was met with lips as desperate, as loving, as heartbroken as her own.

The kiss couldn't have lasted for more than twenty seconds. A kiss that would last for only a moment, a kiss that would last for the rest of her life.

Emily couldn't bear to watch Laleh depart. She kept her dark teary eyes fixed on her dorm room door. It was only when her mother hissed, "and as for you ..." that Emily sprung into action. She slapped her, hard, across the face. The way she'd often been slapped as a child. And then she stormed back into her dorm room and snapped, "Send a car service for me when you've left the house for wherever it is you're spending Christmas this year. You just ruined the only love I've ever known and I'll be damned if I have to spend the next few days watching you gloat about it."

It was her mother, of course, who delivered the news two weeks later. Someone had provided evidence to the Iranian government that Laleh had engaged in a secret lesbian affair while enrolled at Yale. Many speculated that it was Laleh herself who had leaked the information, knowing the penalty in advance. Knowing that homosexual behavior was a capital offense. She was stoned to death in public as a warning to all Iranians about the risk of American corruption.

For the next year, Emily wore black. Lost nearly thirty pounds and became a skeletal version of her former self. Began to draw small shallow cuts on the back of her arms with razor blades. Finally realized that no matter how visible her grief, her mother would remain steadfast, would never acknowledge "that incident" or its aftermath, would never admit to the pain she'd caused her daughter or the innocent life she'd assisted in ending.

No, Elizabeth Prentiss would never feel guilty about the fact that she was able to save face within her tight-knit political circle by sacrificing Emily's daughter's heart or her lover's life.

And, as time passed, even though Laleh was no longer alive, Emily replaced the promise she had made so many years before, in a creaky dorm room bed on the sprawling green campus of Yale University, with a new one: she'd never permit herself to love anyone else like that for as long as she lived.

**Present Day**

... and yet the love she felt for Spencer mirrored the love she'd felt for Laleh. Only it was an even deeper love, a love that was bourne out of twenty years spent carefully and meticulously protecting her heart with a seemingly-impenetrable steel covering. A steel covering that, when she'd first met Laleh, didn't exist, couldn't begin to imagine would one day exist.

If losing Laleh had resulted in all of the nameless, faceless fucking and all of the casual dead-end relationships Emily had engaged in to ensure that she'd never have to experience pain like that again ... then what would happen when she inevitably lost Spencer, too?

Because no matter what promises they'd made, no matter how much love they felt, Emily still couldn't fully make herself believe that it would last.

After all, Emily knew something that Spencer didn't: there was still something in their relationship that was far too broken to fix.

It was her.


	13. Replaced, Part I

It was the first time in years that Emily had tortured herself by conjuring up every meticulous detail of that brief semester with Laleh back in 1989. She was grateful for Spencer's arms encircling her waist and holding her from behind, sparing him from witnessing the wide nostalgic smile playing at the corner of her pink lips as she recalled in detail all the nights the two freshmen had eschewed their textbooks in favor of studying one another's bodies instead. Back then, it had seemed like those nights were endless, countless in number - and yet now, a lifetime later, they'd been reduced to only a few brief moments, mere blips on the screen of Emily's sexual chronology.

Her bright grin faded and her lower lip began to tremble as she relived that last night with Laleh, the night they'd exchanged rings and promised to love each other for as long as they both lived, the night preceding the unexpected discovery by their parents, preceding their subsequent forced separation.

Emily couldn't prevent herself from re-experiencing the very same agonizing, visceral reaction of twenty years ago when she'd listened to her mother's cold and removed voice on the other end of the telephone bluntly informing her that Laleh had been executed in Iran for "homosexual conduct." Nor could she prevent the teardrops from cascading down her face when she remembered how she'd immediately contacted an old Pakistani friend from her multicultural boarding school, fluent in Farsi, begging him to search for a news article or clipping or _something _to confirm her mother's suggestion that Laleh had openly confessed without provocation despite being fully aware that she would be put to death for her transgression. In less than a day, Nabil managed to locate a government-issued press release, translating the text over the phone as Emily wept openly upon learning that not only had Laleh turned herself in but that the government had offered her a chance to live if she would agree to repent in public for her actions and to warn other Iranian girls about the immoral trickery of Americans in their plans to corrupt innocents into committing "haram" (transgressions against Allah), an offer she had refused. No, Laleh had chosen death by stoning instead.

And it was all Emily's fault. If only she had jumped off the bed when Laleh first showed her how girls in Iran could be punished for laying together "innocently," if only she hadn't reached underneath Laleh's skirt to show her exactly why that muted, subversive act of pleasure could become so very, very dangerous ... if only she hadn't kept their affair a secret, if only she'd just made one phone call to any of her numerous friends around the globe who would have warned her about the potential consequences for Laleh if anyone found out about their relationship ... God, why didn't she just make one phone call back in those days before they'd fallen in love, back in those early, guilty days when they themselves swore repeatedly it would never happen again. Why didn't she just make one fucking phone call before it was too late?

_Because it was already too late, _Emily realized with sudden clarity. _It was too late the second she approached me after class and hypnotized me with those Persian green eyes. It had always been too late._

A muffled sob escaped her throat and she felt the sheets rustle behind her as Spencer sat up and rested his head on her shoulder. "Emily?" he asked gently, pulling her hands away from her face as she tried in vain to conceal the tears streaming from her dark eyes. "Emily, what's wrong?"

"I- I can't -" she choked out.

"Yes. Yes, you can," Spencer insisted, his boyish face reflecting unbridled compassion and concern. "You can tell me anything."

She buried her face in his chest and inhaled deeply, spilling out the entire story from beginning to end for the very first time in her life as he stroked her black hair and left tender kisses on her forehead. When she was finished, she looked up at him, almost pleadingly, and asked, "Don't you see, Spencer? I destroy everything I love, everything I touch. I don't want to destroy you, too. And the promise I made to you, the same promise I made to Laleh ... Well, maybe it was a mistake. Maybe we'd both be better off knowing that we shared something beautiful for a moment and then went our separate ways than having this ... this beauty ... replaced in our memories by the inevitable ugliness that's bound to follow."

Spencer's muscles tensed, his jaw visibly clenching as he shook his head vehemently. "Emily, listen to me. I can't feel like I'm constantly on the verge of losing you. What happened with Laleh is beyond imaginable, but you are not responsible." His voice softened. "I understand why you'd feel that way, though. I felt the same way when you told me about the OxyContin and when I found you this morning, half-dead. I felt like it was all my fault."

"But Spencer, I chose to -"

"Right. You chose to do drugs because you were in pain. And when Laleh died, you chose to starve and cut yourself because you were in pain." He ran his limber fingers over the back of her arm, surprised that it had taken him so long to notice the white risen lines there, the faded remnants of her self-induced scars. "But Emily ... You're stronger than me. You're stronger than Laleh. Because you found a way to survive. She chose to end her life and I spent six months barely going through the motions of living, driven only by the prospect of avenging your death ... and then after I killed Ian Doyle ..."

Spencer swallowed audibly, his body suddenly freezing as the sentence trailed off, his words dissipating into the heavy air.

After a pause that seemed to last forever, Emily finally prompted, "After you killed Ian Doyle ... _what?"_

"Um, well ... Do you remember what I said in your apartment? About how I probably wouldn't be visiting anymore?"

"Yes," she responded tentatively, shifting slightly on the bed so she could watch his facial expressions even as he tilted his chin upward to avoid her gaze.

Spencer took a deep breath. "I had heroin on me that night. And I don't just mean a bag or two. I had a bundle. That's ten bags."

"I know what a bundle is, Spencer," she reminded him, somewhat annoyed.

He kept his hazel eyes fixed on the white-painted ceiling, his hands repetitively stroking her arm even as his voice took on the dreamy quality of someone lost in a vivid memory of the past. "Of course, of course you do," he mumbled to himself. "But the reason ... the reason I'd never be visiting you again wasn't because killing Doyle had freed me. It only made the grief worse. I had nothing to live for anymore. So I ... I bought the largest syringe available and planned to go home and inject the dope. All of it. At once. Directly into my carotid or femoral artery. I mean, even if you shoot half a bag into an artery, you're as good as dead, but I wanted to make sure it would work."

Emily couldn't bring herself to speak. She envisioned herself as one of the Sirens, so destructive that her mere presence around other human beings could result in their downfall. During casual sex, she'd always enjoyed the protection afforded to her by playing the "femme fatale" role - but she certainly didn't do it for her partner's benefit. And twice now when she'd shed the whole seductive temptress act, it turned out that it wasn't her own vulnerability that posed the greatest threat after all: it was theirs.

But that night she'd crouched in her bedroom closet and listened to Spencer talk about how much he loved her, they hadn't ever touched in a way that was anything but professional, hadn't kissed, hadn't fucked or made love or whatever goddamn phrase they were using at the moment ... Hell, they hadn't even been aware that the other had also been harboring secret feelings of love. _So how many unknown casualties have there been? _Emily couldn't help wondering uneasily ... and then she was struck by a deeper, more sinister thought: _Oh my fucking god. What would have happened if I hadn't accidentally made my presence known that night?_

She didn't realize she'd spoken the words aloud until Spencer shrugged his thin shoulders helplessly and stated, with a finality that chilled her to her very core, "... then I would be dead." Almost shamefully, he rambled on, "I mean, I know suicide by heroin is a painless, cowardly way to go, especially when compared with the nobility of being stoned to death, but ..."

"There's no such thing as a noble suicide," Emily declared with slightly more force than she'd intended, grabbing his face with both hands and forcing him to look at her. "Laleh was eighteen years old when she died. Eighteen years old! And no matter what vows we made at Yale, I'd like to think that, if she had lived, she would have found love with someone else. Maybe not her husband but a ... a servant, perhaps, or a friend ... and, Spencer ... Spencer, what if none of this -" Emily took her small hand off his cheek and swept it over their intertwined bodies, across the stained and rumpled bedsheets, "what if none of this had ever happened? Wouldn't that have been a kind of torture, too?"

He cocked his head thoughtfully, processing her question.

"Because it would have been ... it _was_, I should say ... it was torture for me," she admitted, lowering her eyes. "Not only being in love with you, but when we kissed and you ran out of my apartment, when you went down on me but didn't permit me to touch you on the plane, when we had sex at the club and you wouldn't let yourself come ... It was absolute torture. And not the good kind, either."

"The - the good kind?" Spencer squeaked, his face turning at least three shades of red.

"Yeah, you know," Emily continued, waving her hand dismissively, "the kind where you tie your partner up and tease them for hours until they're in a total frenzy or where you use ice or your teeth or gentle whipping - none of that hardcore stuff, at least not for me - to exploit the continuum between pain and pleasure or ..." She stopped abruptly, feeling his erection growing against her leg. "Spencer!" she admonished. "We're talking about _suicide _here!"

"I thought we were talking about torture," he groaned, pressing himself against her, his lips against her neck gently holding her smooth flesh between his teeth before letting go. "The ... uh, what did you say? The good kind?"

Emily couldn't help herself. "Why, do you think that's that something you'd enjoy? For me to tie you up and tease you until your pretty mouth was begging me to fuck you?" she whispered seductively.

His cock twitched against her even as an anxious frown formed on his lips. "The tying up thing ... I don't - I'm not - you see, I've been tied up before and I ..."

Of course. Tobias.

"It's not like that," she promised, gazing into his shifting brown eyes. "It's not like that at all. There's always a safe word. In case it becomes too much or starts to feel dangerous. One word and the game's over." When he nodded, his innocent face so open, so trusting, Emily impulsively kissed his chapped lips and gripped him in her hand, slowly moving it up and down his shaft. "What would our word be?" she questioned, squeezing him and eliciting a spontaneous whimper of excitement. "Hypothetically, of course."

"Uh ... 'uncertainty principle'?" Spencer offered, the first phrase that came to mind.

Emily laughed, showing her perfect white teeth. "Too many syllables."

"Well, what's yours?"

She loosened her grip and stared at him with those eyes, those eyes like black holes that could mesmerize and paralyze at the same time. "It used to be ... it used to be 'Spencer.' Because I knew that if I heard your name spoken aloud by anyone else during sex, it would make me stop whatever I was doing and just ... leave."

"Oh, Emily ..." he sighed, leaning forward to kiss her. "That's so ..."

"Pathetic?" she blushed, chagrined.

"I was going to say romantic," Spencer murmured, tugging her hand off of him and intertwining their fingers underneath the covers, stroking his thumb against hers. "You know ... I think I might know a word that would make us both stop immediately ..."

"Yeah?" she asked curiously. "What is it?"

"Wheels."

"As in, 'wheels up,'" they said simultaneously, both laughing at the other's attempt to mimic Hotch's stern, abrasive, demanding tone.

"That's perfect, Spencer. Although I do have to admit ..." Emily lowered her voice, taking on a distinctly coquettish lilt as she disentagled her fingers from his to fondle his balls, "I can't tell you how many times I've watched you sleeping on the jet and just had to escape to the bathroom so I could touch myself, imagining your face buried in my pussy and licking me until I came."

Spencer grunted, his cock stiffening further and leaking a stream of pre-come, the warm droplets trickling down onto Emily's palm.

"So ... ?" she prodded suggestively.

He was still apprehensive at the idea of being restrained, of being rendered entirely powerless, but once he reached down between her legs and found her completely soaked, Spencer nodded complicitly, wanting to be a part of her fantasy just as much as he'd made her a part of his.

A brief, excited smile crossed Emily's lips before she crawled off the bed and began to paw through the gift basket on the floor, muttering, "Merci, Garcia" when she located the silky bondage ties. They were perfect. Not too restrictive or abrasive and yet still strong enough to remain knotted tightly around someone's wrists or ankles if they began to thrash or resist.

She looked up at the bed and frowned. The bedposts were much too far apart to tie one of Spencer's wrists to each. That meant ... "Do you want your hands tied behind your back or in front?"

"Uh ... behind, I guess?"

Emily motioned for him to sit up as she climbed onto the bed behind him and clasped his wrists together, tying them together with the same kind of knot she'd been taught to use during her Interpol and FBI training, the kind of knot she'd also, of course, been taught how to escape. But Spencer had failed the strength and endurance courses so many times he'd been granted an exclusionary waiver before he'd ever managed to master those techniques.

Not that he had anything to worry about. After all, those methods were designed to protect them against unsubs. And with an unsub, there was no such thing as a "safe word."

When Spencer started to lay down again, Emily shook her head and said, "No, don't. You'll cut off circulation to your hands too quickly that way."

He looked at her apprehensively. "How many times have you _done _this?" he wanted to know, a hint of jealousy in his voice.

"Enough times to know how to do it safely," she responded simply, propping two pillows behind his back before pushing the sheets and the comforter to the edge of the bed, uncovering Spencer's body in all its naked glory.

"So," Emily began, drawing one fingertip from his shoulder to his stomach, "do you want me to make you come over and over again or -"

"Yes," Spencer blurted out desperately, his eyes trained on her finger as additional droplets of pre-come oozed from the tip of his cock.

"Or," she continued, raising an eyebrow, "do you want me to bring you to the edge so many times that when I finally give you the release you're begging for, you'll come so hard you black out and wake up to find the entire bed drenched?"

"Oh ..." he moaned. That sounded good, too. And besides, how difficult could it really be to hold off? After all, Spencer had been practicing his own version of orgasm denial for as long as he could remember. "That. I want that."

Emily smirked, visibly pleased by his choice. "Before we start ..." she started to say, and then hesitated, her black eyes clouding with emotion while she cleared her throat. "Before we start, before we both say things so dirty they'd make Morgan blush ... I want you to know that I love you. That I'll love you for as long ..."

"Don't," he warned, about to hold up a finger to stop her before remembering that both of his hands were tied behind his back. "Don't say it. Because I can't make the same promise."

She recoiled in surprise, her face reflecting the sharp violent sting of pain that seemed to puncture each of her organs at once, like she'd been shelled by a sudden assault of gunfire.

"Not because I can't promise to love you for as long as we live," Spencer continued quickly, "but because I can't promise to _stop _loving you even if one of us ..."

As his voice trailed off and Emily realized where his sentence had been leading, she wasn't sure whether to burst into tears or rush to place her arms around his waist and cover his neck and face with affectionate kisses.

She did both.

"Hey," Spencer murmured into her hair, momentarily resenting the restraints that prevented him from holding her. "Hey ... Hey, baby?"

Hearing that sweet, genuine term of endearment only prompted an additional flood of tears and an increased frenzy of kisses. _When was the last time anyone called me 'baby' and meant it? _Emily wondered. _When was the last time I heard that word from anyone other than some smooth-talking guy trying to buy me a drink or some asshole trying force his dick deeper down my throat?_

"Oh, Spencer," she whispered to him in between kisses. "Oh, baby ..."

She'd never called a guy 'baby' before. Women, yes, but only if it was their first time and only as a calculated attempt to increase their level of comfort, to reassure them that they were doing everything right.

No, wait. That wasn't quite true. Emily and Matthew used to call each other "baby" when they masturbated together as teenagers, which was often. They'd never touched, just verbalized their fantasies of what would happen if they did. Matthew always described fantasizing about the hand stroking him belonging to Emily, about dry-humping against her body. They were almost like ... well, they were almost like _Spencer's _fantasies. It was Matthew, in fact, who kept insisting that guys just closed their eyes and imagined that the hand jerking them off wasn't their own. She didn't listen, of course, but his words proved true after all: the boy who impregnated her was equally as anxious and apprehensive about sex as she had been and it was only after an hour and a half of erratic, labored thrusting that Emily realized he would have probably enjoyed a hand-job much more.

"Spencer," she said carefully, an idea forming in her mind, "I want you to tell me about the time you were in college and came without being touched. I want you to tell me what that girl said to you that excited you so much."

His face crumbled and he swiftly turned his head away so only his profile was visible. "It's so ... embarrassing ..." he eventually managed to choke out.

"Let me guess." Emily lowered her voice into her highly-practiced sultry, seductive purr. "She noticed you were hard and talked about grinding her body against that huge cock of yours. She asked if you'd like it if she unzipped your pants and put her hand on it and stroked it. She asked if you ever thought about her stroking you when you were alone in your bedroom or in the shower. She talked about wanting to jerk you off and watching you come ... and that was what excited you so much you lost control."

They were Matthew's words, not hers, but when Spencer gulped, his Adams Apple bobbing up and down as his entire body trembled, she knew she was right. "And let me guess something else. You did imagine pleasuring me or making love to me, but what would _really _excite you was imagining my hand moving up and down your cock and the look on my face when I watched you spurt out so much come, watched a month's worth of pent-up release just spewing from your cock ... Am I right?"

Spencer didn't have to say anything. The answer was right there underneath her. He was so stiff that every vein in his dick protruded and visibly throbbed as it rose almost impossibly, resting against his stomach and pointing toward his face, with pre-come drizzling from the tip in a steady stream.

"Because _that's_ what I'm going to do after I explore your entire body and bring you to the edge over and over again," Emily whispered, sucking on his earlobe. "You see that mirror over there? Across the room? When I'm finished with you, that mirror is going to be absolutely _covered."_

God, she was practically gushing liquid herself just saying the words aloud. But for now, Spencer needed this more than she needed to relieve the throbbing between her legs. He needed to replace that memory of college with an entirely new one. A "fix-it" of sorts. Just like, after he was spent, he'd be in an ideal state to fix the memory that still haunted Emily, the memory of being bent over a table and fucked from behind for hours until she couldn't resist, couldn't fight the need for release a second longer.

Because she loved him and he loved her. Because they'd somehow miraculously managed to fix their own damaged relationship and because they trusted each other enough to try and fix their damaged pasts.

And tomorrow? Well, tomorrow Emily would have to fix the BAU's floundering case against Mandy.

_But, _Emily thought, lowering her mouth to flick her tongue across Spencer's nipple, _tomorrow is so, so far away ..._


	14. Replaced, Part II

"Wait here. I'll be right back," Emily promised, leaving Spencer naked and exposed on the bed as she disappeared around the corner and into the closet near the hotel door. He could hear a sharp zipping sound and the rustling of clothing as he craned his neck to try and see what she was doing. He'd already dumped out the entire contents of her "go bag" on the luxury jet, after all, and he knew she didn't have any sex toys or lingerie hidden there.

When she finally turned the corner, shifting her near-black eyes demurely before giving him an uncharacteristic, self-conscious wave, all of the saliva in Spencer's mouth disappeared. It wasn't her "go bag" she'd been rummaging through after all. It was _his_. And she'd emerged wearing a Georgetown T-shirt he'd picked up during one of his lectures at the university - a poor fit for his skinny frame and limber torso, but perfect for Emily's body: long enough to cover her upper thighs while also tight enough to draw attention to her feminine curves. In that shirt, with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, she could have easily passed for a college student. Easily.

"So," Emily fluttered her lashes, gliding onto the bed next to Spencer and resting her head against the pillow adjacent to his, "I was going to tell you how hot it makes me to know you fantasize about me but instead ... Instead, I thought I'd let you taste." She spread her legs slightly apart and reached underneath the T-shirt, dipping two fingers into herself with a soft sigh before withdrawing and teasingly running them in front of Spencer's face, inches away from his eager open mouth. When he finally acquiesced, leaning forward to taste her, Emily pulled away, her ink jet ponytail swishing from side to side as she shook her head with a flirtatious "uh-uh," rubbing her juices across her own lips and sucking delicately on her fingers until all visible traces of her arousal were gone.

She curved her body toward his and began to kiss him - her kisses hard, aggressive, her tongue ferociously twisting and turning inside his mouth, her fingers splayed against the back of his head to draw him even closer to her. Spencer greedily drank in her lips, her tongue, absorbing her taste as his exposed nipples hardened against her own covered ones when her blue and gray T-shirt brushed against him. "Can you taste it?" she whispered breathlessly against his mouth. Not trusting his voice, he nodded. Oh, could he ever taste her. Could he ever.

Spencer's eyes were still partially closed, his mouth still tugging on her lower lip when Emily receded just as abruptly as she'd approached, sitting back on her legs and watching triumphantly as his tongue darted out to lick the residual liquid from his lips. Innocently, almost uncertainly, she asked, "So ... do you like the way I taste?"

"Yes! I- I love the way you taste!" He sputtered out awkwardly. "Tasting you like that ... It makes - it made me so -"

"Oh, Spencer!" Emily exclaimed, interrupting him and feigning surprise upon glancing down at his rigid cock. "You're so big and hard ... are you hard for _me?"_

"Y-yes," he grunted, trying to shake several loose strands of his honey brown hair out of his eyes.

"Tell me," she demanded, gently wiping his sweaty forehead with her palm and tucking his hair behind his ears. "Tell me you're hard for me."

Spencer gazed at her like a helpless adolescent, his voice low and unsteady as he groaned, "I'm hard for you. I'm so fucking hard for you."

A delighted smile formed on Emily's heart-shaped mouth as she kissed him chastely and rested her hand on his stomach, above his groin. "Can I -" she hesitated, furrowing her brow in mock apprehension. "Can I touch it?"

Spencer nodded fervently and, for one excruciatingly long moment, Emily moved closer and simply looked at it, as though it were the first erection she'd ever seen. Tentatively, she reached out to graze him with one finger, sliding it from the base to the tip before loosely encircling him with her thumb and forefinger and slowly easing her hand up and down, her touch feather-light, her gentle exploration almost taunting him to beg for more.

"Is that ... is that how you do it?" She looked up at him with blinking eyes, her question in a tone slightly younger and more girlish than her real, everyday voice.

"More ... pressure," Spencer half-gasped. "Whole hand ... Faster ..."

Emily's smiled turned wicked as she tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and, for about fifteen seconds of exquisite bliss, gripped him with her whole hand, her palm pressed against his sensitive underside, jerking him rapidly, furiously, mercilessly, jerking him just like he jerked himself off when he was alone. But the moment he felt the signs of his imminent orgasm: the tightening in his stomach, clenching of his balls, and that one intense warning throb resonating throughout his cock, Emily took her hand off him and wondered aloud, "... Like that?"

A desperate "yes!" burst from Spencer's throat as he opened his half-closed eyes, realizing with dismay that Emily wasn't about to offer him the release he craved. "Well," she murmured, "now do you want to see how I touch myself?"

"Can you maybe finish touching me first?" Spencer offered hopefully, cursing the restraints binding his hands behind his back and preventing him from reaching down and relieving the all-encompassing primal need to come. To come now. To come hard and fast and violently.

"If I don't show you right this moment, I'll lose my nerve," she mumbled, her long-lashed eyes darting away from his, as though she were disclosing some shameful secret. It was an act, of course. Ever the exhibitionist, Emily relished the voracious expression on Spencer's face that gradually replaced the disappointment of his thwarted desire when she lifted up her T-shirt and laid down on the bed with her head near his lower legs, spreading her own so her outer thigh was touching his as she reached down to circle her clit with her finger. "I'm imagining ... that it's your finger rubbing my pussy. Mmmmm ... You're going slow at first, but when you feel how wet I am, when you feel my hard, raised clit ... You move faster ... Can you see it from there? Can you see how much I want it?"

"Y-yes," Spencer stuttered, his sunken eyes fixed on the view.

"Oh, Spencer," she moaned. "I'm thinking - I'm thinking such dirty things. Things I shouldn't be thinking about."

"L-like what?"

"Like having your mouth on my ..."

Emily didn't have a chance to finish her sentence. Within seconds, Spencer managed to lean over her body and bury his face between her legs. Somehow, knowing that he couldn't use his hands rendered him rougher, harder, and he took her clit between his teeth, sucking it ferociously while fighting the urge to grind his own body against the velvety sheets of the bed, fighting the urge to relieve that unbearable tension in his prick, fighting the urge to surrender to the pressing need to come himself.

Emily hadn't expected him to be this dominating, this goddamn _hungry _for her. She'd never been comfortable submitting to anyone before, but the way Spencer took control and left her utterly at his mercy excited the hell out of her. Instead of wrestling away from him, she moaned and spread her legs wider; his mouth locked on her cunt, his lips and tongue steadily pulling on her clit as though drawing an oyster out of its thick shell.

When Emily arched her back and lifted her hips to gyrate against his face, her clit crashed against the front of his clenched teeth. The sudden sharp sting of pain mixed with the intense pleasure of his rhythmically sucking mouth and tongue left her wrapping her legs around his head, quickly moving one hand down to her breasts to pinch a pebble-hard nipple and the other against the top of his head, pushing his face deeper into her as she came, shuddering and quaking and crying out like a wounded animal.

It was an unexpected brutal car collision of an orgasm and when it was over, the feeling of Spencer's teeth gently biting against her became too much, too sensitive, as the perfect combination of pain and pleasure that had initially triggered her orgasm receded into a dull pain alone. She pressed her fingers against his forehead to make him stop, not wanting to forcefully push him away since he was still grasping her oversensitive nub between his teeth.

When Spencer looked up from underneath her, his entire face glistening with her liquid, and Emily met his eyes, those beautiful puppy eyes, she was glad that they'd strayed from their scripted role-play for the moment. _I could just stare into his eyes all day, _she thought deliriously. Eyes filled with such uninhibited love and desire, eyes that remained locked on hers as he tenderly kissed the insides of the thighs still propped up against his shoulders, eyes that challenged her as he delicately lapped at her cunt, sending small electric shocks through her body every time his wide, soft tongue met the underside of her clit.

It took Emily a moment to shake herself out of her post-orgasmic bliss and realize that he was rubbing himself against bed sheets, his body moving faster and his licking becoming more erratic with each stroke.

"Don't you dare," Emily hissed, pushing him back against the pillows and thwarting the imminent promise of sweet, sweet release. "Sit back."

Reluctantly, Spencer propped himself up against the back of the bed, his cock straining, its protruding veins visibly pulsating and pre-come drizzling down the sides. "Soon," Emily swore soothingly. "Soon. And it will be _so _good that you'll thank me afterward, I swear."

"But it could be so good right now," he pleaded with dry, cracked lips.

"So you didn't really want to make me come?" Emily responded, resuming her college student role and calculating the precise amount of hurt she needed to reflect in her voice: too much and it wouldn't be believable, too little and he'd argue (correctly, in fact) that she already knew he loved to make her come. "So you just did it because you wanted to get off?"

Gauging his reaction, she could tell she'd hit the mark perfectly. Spencer's hazel eyes widened and he stammered, "No! What? Of course I ... I - I just thought you'd ... Wait, Emily ... are you being serious now or ... ?"

_"Or." Of course "or," _she thought to herself, suppressing a smirk. _Welcome to Role-Playing 101, pretty boy._

"I mean, if you had only wanted me to get you off, that would have been OK," she half-whispered in a voice much closer to her own, her dark eyes staring down into her lap. "After all, isn't that the only thing guys really want, anyway? To get off?"

"Not me," Spencer replied with such genuine care and concern it was immediately clear to her that he'd gotten lost somewhere in the ever-shifting line between role-playing and real life. Even his erection, which had been as sturdy and unassailable as the Eiffel Tower only seconds earlier, had started to deflate.

Emily's mournful eyes narrowed and her trembling lower lip straightened into a thin line as she took her right hand and punctuated each word with a gentle but forceful slap against his cock. "Then. Don't. Make. Me. Regret. This."

The pressure in Spencer's cock increased to an unbearable level and he howled out a string of moans each time her palm smacked against him. After the last slap, Emily stopped cold when she heard his voice half-sobbing, "Please, please just touch it. I don't want it to be like before, Emily, please not like before ..."

She knew what he meant instantly. He didn't want to come without being touched and he was perilously close to doing just that. And yet she also knew that if he exploded the second she touched him, it would have the very same humiliating effect as the memory she'd been trying to replace. "Hold back. Think of something disturbing. Think of a nightmare you recently had," Emily urged in a quick but even voice.

Unsubs. Spencer closed his eyes and thought of unsubs, just like Emily knew he would. His brain flashed over textual descriptions of their most recent case files, focusing on the detailed reports of sexual sadists, his eyelids skimming the air as though he was re-reading those pages documenting the horrifying acts they'd committed against women - some dead and some alive - all branded as victims for eternity. It wasn't the first time Spencer had needed to call upon the perversity he encountered at his job to temper his sexual excitement; in fact, it was sometimes the only way for him to remain in control of his libido while working in such close proximity to the woman of his fantasies.

After a minute or so of silence, he opened his eyes, startled to find his face only inches away from Emily's. Holding his face in her hands, she kissed his nose and murmured, "Now lean back against the pillows just a little and let me touch you." She turned to fix her stare on his hardening penis before again meeting his eyes. "Let me make you come."

When Emily grasped him in her hand, the sheer amount of pre-come lubricating his cock made a firm grip impossible so she wiped it away carefully with the bottom of her shirt, catching him staring at her in complete amazement. "What?" she asked defensively, self-consciously biting the cuticle on her thumb.

"I love how you just did that like it was no big deal," Spencer responded, smiling gratefully.

"But ... it's not a big deal?" The confused statement emerged from her mouth as a question.

"You don't think it's - I mean there is a _lot _of it ... Isn't that a little - a little -" Spencer waited for Emily to rescue him with an interruption as she so frequently did when he struggled to complete a sentence but she still clearly had no idea where he was going so he continued, blushing shamefully, "a little ... gross?"

"Are you kidding?" She gaped at him. "You really have no idea how goddamn hot it is to see you so turned on, do you? You still don't get that I can't wait - can't fucking _wait _- to watch you come, to actually see it spurting out of you instead of just feeling it inside of me, do you?"

Spencer inhaled sharply as additional droplets began to form at the rigid and nearly-purple head of his cock, the brief reprise from that unbearable sense of urgency quickly fading into the distance. "Being ashamed of this is like being ashamed of eating," Emily continued, placing her right hand on him and slowly stroking up and down. "A kind of sexual anorexia."

"And," she added, tightening her grip as he groaned, "just like anorectics believe that they'll start bingeing if they stop restricting their food intake so dramatically, you're afraid that you'll never be able to control yourself again unless you continue to suppress your urges. But see, Spencer? See how much more you _need _it right now after I've made you hold back for this long, after I've bound your wrists behind your back and teased you like this? See how good you are at controlling yourself? You won't become some kind of nymphomaniac if you -"

"Satyr," Spencer interjected, instantly regretting his complete inability to make himself just shut up for once the moment the word left his lips.

Emily rolled her eyes, squeezing the base of his cock tightly as a not-so-subtle reminder that she, too, was just as well-versed in the BAU dictionary of sexual perversions.

With that, Spencer's entire body was trembling, shaking, his teeth gritting as he managed to stammer out, "But what if - what if at work it's like college again and ... and I start thinking about you ... and I - what if I -"

Emily suddenly stopped stroking him and turned her body toward his, kissing him lovingly, her fingers brushing through his sweaty brown hair. After breaking away from his soft mouth, she spoke with delicate care, not wanting to stray too far from the role-play, and yet also understanding that this question was equally as central as the restraints and the orgasm denial were in her attempt at undoing Spencer's long-held association between sex and control.

"Then ... you'll spill coffee on yourself so you have a reason to change your clothes and we'll find some excuse to be together or to call each other in private while I listen to you describe exactly what you were thinking about while I get off listening to you. Because Spencer?" Emily paused, forcing him to sneak a look at her flushed face, her bright eyes lit up with excitement. "If that ever happened, I'd be so turned on that I wouldn't be able to control myself, either."

He exhaled audibly, his eyes straying down to his engorged member, now in such a state of arousal it was becoming physically painful.

"I'm so negligent!" Emily squealed, effortlessly resuming her college girl persona. "Poor baby, you've just been listening to me talk and talk and talk. Scoot down to the edge of the bed and let me make it up to you?"

Although her uncanny ability to transform herself into this fictionalized character on a whim was unnerving on multiple levels, Spencer wasn't about to start a discussion about precisely why he found it so troubling since his mind remained focused solely on the unrelenting throbbing in his groin as he awkwardly shifted his weight back and forth until he was sitting upright against the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, whimpering involuntarily when his full, heavy balls brushed against the sheets.

That's where Emily began touching him after she'd straddled his left thigh, rubbing her slick pussy back and forth, giving an appreciative murmur while she fondled his balls gently, cupping each in her right hand. The additional sensation of her wet heat against him was incredible; Spencer grunted out a series of incomprehensible, purely animalistic sounds as his head fell back against his shoulders, his lower body desperately and involuntarily humping against the air.

"This is gonna be so good," Emily purred in his ear. "I want you to watch me. I want you to watch me, watching you."

He fixed his eyes on her face as she licked her lips and gave him one last deviant smile before placing her right hand around his cock and rapidly pumping her fist up and down, her breathing growing more rapid as she pummeled her hand against him. It felt so fucking good that Spencer wanted it to last forever. When she moved her body further down his leg and nudged his thighs open, allowing him to feel her damp and matted pubic hair brushing against the side of his dick, her clit pressed against the bottom of his hipbone, he became even more excited.

"Come for me," she urged, her hand thrusting up and down at a rapid-fire pace as she squeezed and relaxed her grip without once breaking her rhythmic strokes. "Oh, baby, you're so close ... Mmmhhhh, I can feel how close you are. Please, Spencer, please come for me ... Oh god, I want to see you come so bad. I want to watch your hot come -"

And that's when he exploded.

One deep throb resonated throughout his cock before he felt jet after jet of come spurting out of him in long continuous streams, all of his other senses dulling save for the all-encompassing sensation of each wave, more intense than the last, pulsating throughout his body. The rest of the world faded into the distance, like he was entering another galaxy, like he was in the middle of a meteor shower - like he'd _become _a meteor shower - with his ears ringing and his vision greying, blurring out even Emily's transfixed and eager gaze, her throaty impressed "mmmmhhh"s of encouragement. All of his self-consciousness disappeared as his body continued to respond to the frenzied merciless movements of her fist clenched around him.

It could have lasted twenty seconds. It could have lasted an hour. Hell, it could have lasted an eternity. Time simply ceased to exist in the new otherworldly sphere of his orgasm.

And then, gradually, Spencer returned to himself. Not with a crash, but with a gentle resumption of his senses: the ringing in his ears quieting to a faint buzz, the colors of the room and the features of Emily's impossibly beautiful face coming back into focus, the dull burning ache irritating his wrists from the friction of his thrashing and the sticky droplets of Emily's arousal, slick and wet against his thigh. All of it floated back to him as Spencer floated back to himself.

Emily slowed the pace of her hand and gently coaxed the last few spurts out of him until he'd become entirely limp in her palm. "That was, by far, the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life," she said in a low, breathy voice. "My nipples are so hard right now you could hang Christmas ornaments off them."

Kissing his jawline, pressing her body into his, she whispered in his ear, "and I told you it'd hit the mirror, didn't I?"

Spencer glanced at the mirror across the room, at the strands of come that had trickled down the glassy surface and onto the carpet. He was certainly impressed by the distance, "but -"

"Look up," Emily murmured, her mouth on his neck.

The ceiling. He looked up and realized that he was staring at gobs of semen. Semen that had been ejected from his body so forcefully it hit the fucking _ceiling_. This was the very definition of "losing control." Suddenly, Spencer was plagued by insecurities over what he'd looked like and sounded like when he permitted Emily to take him to a place he'd never been before, a place of complete and total surrender, a place where he'd left his body behind and entered a kind of trance, a kind of blissful haven. Or heaven.

Reaching behind him to untie the knotted restraints binding his wrists, Emily asked the one question, the one soft uncertain question that made him want to weep, he loved her so much for it.

"Are you ... are you okay?"

But he didn't weep. Just smiled with that boyish grin and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his body so tightly she could feel his elevated heartbeat resonating in her chest, all of his insecurities drifting away. "Yeah. I'm okay. I'm more than okay."

"Spencer," she said gravely, after a long pause, "I have a 'fix-it' of my own that I want you to help me with."

He didn't like the melancholy sound of her voice and, not wanting to ruin the moment, he wondered aloud, "Do you think maybe we can eat first? I've been subsiding on Godiva chocolate from that gift basket for the past 24 hours and unless Picasso was cutting your coke and smack with protein powder, you haven't eaten since ..."

Emily wrapped her hand around his cock, gathering some of his drying semen in her hand and licking it delicately off her palms and fingers. "There," she announced. "Protein."

Spencer shot her a look, even though he knew she'd ultimately get what she wanted. She always did.

"Can we just ... get this over with first?" Emily asked, her eyes downcast.

"Get what over with?"

"I want you to lean me over the table and fuck me from behind as I resist. As I resist until it becomes too painful not to resist anymore. You won't speak, not once. You'll fuck me hard and fast until I ... until I can't stand it anymore and gush all over you."

_She wants me to do what Ian Doyle did to her, _Spencer realized, horrified. "I won't brutalize you like that," he replied, almost angrily. "I just won't."

"But don't you get it, Spencer?" Emily shifted backward, a pleading expression on her face. "It won't be brutal with you. There will be a mirror right in front of us so I can see your face and you can see mine. There will be a safe word. There won't be any maids or servants walking around like nothing's happening. There won't be any of the humiliation of being forcibly bathed and made to get down on my knees and clean the carpet while you tell me how disgusting I am. Unless ..." Her voice trailed off.

"Unless what?"

"Unless you really _do _think it's disgusting," she added quietly.

"Stop playing games with me, Emily," Spencer chastised, in a tone slightly harsher than he'd intended. "You already know how I feel about it. You _know _it turns me on. So don't try and manipulate me with some guilt trip. And don't ever - _ever _- compare me to Ian Doyle again."

Emily remained silent, twisting a strand of black hair from her ponytail tightly around her finger. He was right. She knew he was right.

"That being said," Spencer continued reluctantly, "I'll do it. But only if you answer a few questions first."

"Anything," she promised, squeezing his forearm gratefully.

"Before you ... before you developed feelings for me, what was your safe word?"

Emily hesitated, a flash of uncertainty crossing her face before she responded. "Tulip."

"... Tulip," Spencer repeated, mulling it over in his mind.

"Yeah. Like the Sylvia Plath poem," Emily added quickly. Too quickly.

"Or like the Persian origin of the name Laleh?" he challenged, watching as her shoulders slumped. "Listen, if you're not going to be honest with me, this isn't going to work."

"What isn't going to work?" she asked, puzzled.

"This!" Spencer shouted. "Us!" He took in a deep breath to calm himself down when he saw the way she flinched as though he was going to strike her. "Emily, you need to understand that before you, I'd only kissed one girl. One. It was so important to me ... and then you showed me that it wasn't even a real kiss after all. And my biggest fear right now is that one day I'm going to look back and find out that you weren't real, either. That this wasn't real."

"Sometimes I don't know what's real," Emily admitted, tears forming in her dark eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. "But I know that this - that what we have - is more real than anything I've ever had before. Maybe I don't know how to show you that I'm scared out of my fucking mind, but I've never been this open, this vulnerable before and ... and I'm terrified that you're going to hurt me in the end. That you're going to wake up one morning and see how completely broken I am on the inside and realize that _you can't fix it_, that no one can fix it ... and ... and ..." Her voice broke as she managed to sob out, "and I'm going to lose you, too."

"That's not going to happen," Spencer insisted firmly. "Just look at the past few days. Look at everything that's happened since you first kissed me in your apartment. I've seen the darkness in you, Emily. I've seen it with my own eyes. And the only thing that would ever drive me away would be if you chose that darkness over the light."

Emily glanced at him askance, her bright eyes still brimming with tears. "I really love you, you know that?"

"I know. And I really love you, too," Spencer replied, putting his arm around her so she could lean against his chest, breathing in the scent of his neck. "Which is why ... I'm willing to do this for you."

"Did you ... Do you have any other questions first?"

"Just one. Am I the only member of the team you've ever been with?" he wondered.

"Yes," Emily answered emphatically. "Yes. Morgan almost managed to get me to kiss JJ when we were drunk but we both started laughing so hard that she spit vodka all over my shirt instead."

"Have you ever ... have you ever wanted to be with anyone else on the team?" Spencer closed his eyes, bracing himself for her reply. It was something he needed to know ... and yet also something he didn't completely want to know, either.

"Honestly? When I first saw JJ, I thought, 'now there's a straight girl I could turn bisexual' ... but being a member of the BAU was far more important to me than getting laid. And I'm pretty sure that screwing the media liaison would have destroyed even the small amount of credibility I'd earned during my first case at Gitmo where I had the chance to show off my Arabic language skills." Emily paused, her pink lips pursed into a smile. Remembering that case, she marveled at how much Spencer had grown and changed. If only Gideon could see his protégé now.

Before he could delay her with any additional questions, Emily stood up on shaky legs and pulled the Georgetown T-shirt over her head as she walked toward the dining table, bending over it without a word, her mouth settling into a grimace.

Spencer nearly called the whole thing off upon seeing the pained expression on her face. She appeared so ... so exposed, so vulnerable, the apprehension in her eyes a stark contrast to her pink labia still glistening with moisture. And then he noticed her discreetly rotating her right wrist, clearly in an attempt to alleviate some of the resulting soreness from jerking him off with such abandon and prolonging his release to ultimately erase the final remaining shreds of anxiety from the embarrassment he'd endured years ago. If anything, the possibility that he could do the same for her, that he could heal the memory of Ian Doyle, made Spencer more determined to try and fix it with this re-enactment. "You need to tell me what to do," he squeaked nervously.

"I need you to get behind me and shove yourself into me, as deep and fast as you can. Don't do it slowly. Don't do it gently. Then I need you to fuck me hard. I mean, _really_ hard. It won't hurt this time because I'm already wet. I should warn you that I'm probably still going to resist. I might even beg you to stop. Do not stop unless I say 'wheels.' And don't speak a word or touch me anywhere. Don't encourage me, don't kiss me or caress me, don't do anything but pummel your dick into my cunt over and over and over again. And after I come ..." Emily hesitated, chewing on her fingernail. "After I come, I need you to make me feel safe. I can't tell you how to do that because ... well, because I felt so unsafe with Doyle that it's hard to imagine we'll even get that far."

Despite the harsh, graphic description of what she expected of him, words that left Spencer cringing, he had to find a way to make himself hard again. So he closed his hazel eyes and envisioned the enthralled expression on Emily's face at the very moment he began to come, conjured up the photographic images of going down on her in the bed on the luxury jet, recalled the sensation of tasting her as she came, fantasized about feeling that same hot wet gush of fluid as her inner walls squeezed his cock.

It worked. His semi-hard erection tented into a steel pole. But this time, there was no urgency, no desperation to come, not after the orgasm he'd just had. He was confident that he was physically capable of doing what she was asking him to do and, unlike Doyle, wouldn't need Viagra to do it.

Was he emotionally capable, though? Well, there was only one way to find out.

Spencer approached her from behind, briefly meeting her eyes in the mirror before grasping the base of his cock with his right hand and jamming it into her. Her sharp inhalation nearly stopped him, but her eyes encouraged him, implored him to continue.

So he did.

For about forty-five minutes, Spencer fucked her - there was no other way to put it, really - while Emily whimpered and clenched her fists against the table, occasionally uttering "unnnnhhhs" of resistance even as she became tighter, wetter, even as he felt that spongy area he was hitting so forcefully begin to expand and fill like a water balloon on the brim of exploding.

He was deep inside of her, much deeper than he'd ever imagined possible, his thick cock utterly submerged in her as her muscles gripped him, impeding his movements slightly. When he watched her shake her head violently, a look of panic forming in her eyes, Spencer had to bite down on the back of his hand to stop himself from the impulse to comfort her with soothing words, with a gentle hand on her back, with a growled reminder of how much she excited him.

Emily's eyes rolled back, a short grunt escaping her throat as a small stream of fluid squirted out of her. She was panting now, forcefully clenching her pussy to try and prevent him from hitting her G-spot, but her efforts only made it easier for Spencer to grind back and forth against the area directly, stimulating it continuously and relentlessly as a second stream of liquid escaped her body. She clenched her abdominal muscles and rose up on her toes, clearly trying to escape the sensation, to somehow thwart the ultimate, ever-approaching release.

This, too, backfired. Spencer's dick slammed against the most spongy, sensitive, inner recesses of her body and he felt her legs start to shake uncontrollably. "Stop," she whispered to herself - and he almost did, until felt her vaginal muscles begin to contract and release rapidly against him, heard her cries of "ohgodohgodohgod" as a flood of warm liquid gushed out of her, watched the look of pure exquisite bliss on her face. It was so incredible, so erotic, that without any warning, Spencer's cock throbbed erratically as he came with her, groaning loudly. His ejaculate mixed with hers, waves of it pouring down his abdomen, his legs, soaking the carpet while they both moaned and twitched and quaked together, their eyes remaining locked in the reflection of the mirror in front of them.

Emily wasn't resisting anymore. "Yes, oh baby, yes ... oh god please don't stop please baby don't fucking stop," she moaned, thrusting her body against him for the first time since he'd entered her. Spencer knew he couldn't last much longer, his body trembling, and then he felt that last tight contraction, that final rush of fluid escape her body as she gasped, "too much ... it's too much ... wheels!" He pulled out immediately, grunting as the last meager spurts of come splashed against the bottom of her legs. When he was finished, Spencer gently placed his arms around her, resting his head on her sweaty back, feeling faint and dizzy from the effects of his second mind-blowing orgasm in less than three hours. "Are you okay?" he whispered. The very same words she'd asked him earlier.

Emily around and stared into his eyes with an unmistakable look of adoration. "No. No, I'm not okay. Because I love you so fucking much it terrifies me."

"Can I ... Can we -" Spencer hesitated, not wanting to sound like some romance novel cliche. "Can we just lay down so I can hold you and kiss you and forget about everything else in the world for this moment?"

Emily nodded, holding onto his waist as they clumsily backed toward the bed, covering one another's mouths and faces and necks with kisses.

And then they heard it. The sound of Spencer's cell phone ringing. Which meant that "this moment" was going to have to be postponed.

If he'd known then just how much more they'd have to endure, how much longer they'd have to wait before they could recapture "this moment" again, Spencer never would have answered that phone.

But he did.

He answered that phone and it shattered their entire world.


	15. Memorized

"When was the last time I saw Emily?" Spencer spoke into his iPhone, blinking rapidly as his face scrunched into an expression of complete bewilderment and he struggled to hold the cell in the crook of his neck while pulling on a fresh pair of black briefs. "I'm ... I'm looking at her right now sir."

Emily sat on her knees on the bed, lifting up the bottom of his T-shirt with one hand to display her glistening pussy and reaching up to cover her mouth in a gesture of mock innocence with the other.

_Not now. _He shook his head and turned away from her. "You received a report that she was ... what? That she was _dead?" _Spencer whirled around, his startled eyes watching as Emily's teasing flirtation rapidly transformed into terrorized disbelief. He almost couldn't hear his supervisor's next statement over her loud, shocked "What? _What_ did he just say?"

"Photographs?"

Both of Emily's hands flew to her mouth, covering it.

"A photo of her being injected with drugs and then ... one of her dead in front of our hotel door?" Spencer repeated numbly.

"At the party," Emily mouthed urgently, her hands mimicking the clicking of a camera. She felt like she was about to vomit up her intestines. _Those young dumb study-abroad kids were constantly taking pictures, _she remembered, but she'd always conscientiously averted the lens, lest her image inadvertently ended up on someone's Facebook page. _So how did someone manage to get a picture of Picasso shooting me up in a corner, away from the party last night? And why would they follow me here to take another photo when I was in the middle of an overdose?_

"Sir, those are questions you need to ask her," Spencer nearly snapped at his boss, straightening his spine. He paused, nodding his head. "Yes, I will put you on speakerphone."

"I love you," Spencer mouthed, crestfallen, before hitting the speakerphone button on his iPhone, easing it onto the wooden night table beside him.

Emily nearly leaped off the bed to hug him in a needy, scared embrace, finding herself grateful that she wasn't alone, not this time. Grateful that, for once, the demons of her past wouldn't be the only witnesses to her dark secrets. Reid held onto her tightly, one arm gripping her around the waist while his hand slowly moved up and down her back, wordlessly comforting her.

Hotch's abrasive voice boomed out at them. "Agent Prentiss?"

"Yes, sir. I'm here," she managed to say, turning her head toward the table.

"Would you care to explain these images now or should I order a formal investigation pending your immediate return?"

Emily looked up at Spencer helplessly. A formal investigation? The kind that would not only end her career as an FBI agent but Spencer's as well? Did she really have a choice here?

When he shrugged in response, his eyes conveying the message _it's up to you, _she knew she'd have to take full responsibility for her actions and protect Spencer at any cost. She was responsible for all of his potential violations of the FBI code of conduct, after all. Like engaging in a sexual relationship with a fellow team member. Like insufflating her with cocaine. Like not reporting his knowledge of her drug use or his awareness of her personal connection to this case.

"Sir, when I was in Paris ..." Emily cringed. Her voice sounded so weak, so guilty. She coughed and began again. "When I was in Paris, I became friends with Mand- Amanda. We engaged in some ... some drug-related activities together. You have to keep in mind, sir, that I was not an active member of the Bureau at the time and I truly thought I'd never have a chance to return to the BAU -"

"Enough with the excuses, Agent Prentiss. I'm not interested. I just need to know the extent to which you've put our team at risk here."

Emily's tone remained stable and remote despite the tears forming in her eyes. "Yes, sir. I failed to disclose my personal connection to Amanda because I thought we were looking for a victim and not an unsub. Mostly, though, because I didn't want to reveal the ... the nature of our friendship. Last night, I went to our drug dealer's apartment in the hope of finding her but she wasn't there. And the temptation ... Well, it just proved to be too much for me."

She waited for a sound from the other end of the line indicating some kind of - any kind of - empathy or understanding. It never came.

"Um, so ..." Emily continued, momentarily flummoxed, "I was offered a speedball - a mixture of cocaine and heroin - which Picasso administered intravenously several times over the course of a few hours. The last one was much stronger in terms of the heroin effect and I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was slumped down in front of the door here, alone. When I used my key card to enter the room, Spencer was still asleep, so I took a shower and put on a long-sleeved shirt to hide the puncture wounds. He didn't ask where I'd been because before I'd left, I mentioned wanting to try and find a separate room since Garcia had accidentally booked the honeymoon suite for us. We were both uncomfortable with ... with that arrangement, but my intention had never really been to find another room. That's why I only carried cash and my key card in my handbag and left all of my identification here. Until now, Reid didn't know where I had been or what I had done."

_Please play along, _Emily implored with her eyes as she recited, "I'm so sorry, Spencer. I should have told you all of this from the beginning."

He coughed, struggling with his words. He was nowhere near as adept at lying as she was. "It - it's OK. I've had my own ... my own issues, as you know. I did wonder why you changed into an evening gown, but I didn't want to pry. I just thought maybe you had a boyfriend you didn't want me to know about."

Oh, shit. She'd forgotten the black cocktail dress. "Thank you," she mouthed silently, pressing her lips to his and then drew back with question marks in her eyes when Spencer passively accepted the kiss, remaining as solid and unresponsive as a statue.

He'd always been so fixated on doing the right thing. He'd always known what the "right thing" was. Not anymore. Not since Emily unexpectedly charged into his life, turning him into a kind of matador robbed of his protective red cape.

"If you weren't carrying any identifying documents, Agent Prentiss, do you have any theories as to how and why someone would e-mail those images to the BAU with the subject line 'Emily Prentiss really is dead this time'?" Hotch asked. "We've generated a few ourselves, but I'd really prefer to hear it directly from you."

"They knew my _name?" _Emily gasped in horror.

"Think, Agent Prentiss. Think. Who was taking pictures last night?"

Hotch's voice was enraged, accusative, unforgiving. He was speaking to her like she was an unsub intentionally withholding crucial evidence that could reveal precisely how Emily had become a target herself when she needed to be treated like a victim, needed to be walked safely through her memories to have even the slightest chance at identifying one small seemingly-insignificant piece of information that might provide them with a lead.

Spencer saved her. Again.

"Close your eyes," he murmured into her ear, his hand petting her black hair gently. "You're safe. I'm right there with you. After you arrived at the party, what happened?"

"Picasso ... He was the first person I recognized. When I didn't see Mandy, I asked him if she'd been around lately. He told me she went to Germany but that she'd be back in a couple of days, as I reported earlier. And then ..."

"Well, either he lied to you or she's using another identity," Hotch interrupted. "We checked her visa and passport information with Customs in both France and Germany. There is no record that she left France or entered Germany at any time."

"Then he lied to me," Emily realized, an involuntary shiver running through her body, prompting Spencer to tighten his grip around her as she buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her words slightly. "Mandy would have bought in bulk if she'd planned on traveling anywhere. I'm not denying that I used drugs with her, sir, but I kept my intake restricted. She didn't."

"What does that mean?" Hotch demanded, his voice tinged with sarcasm. "You'll forgive me if I don't quite appreciate the line between 'recreationally' shooting heroin and having an _actual _drug problem."

Emily stepped back from Spencer and stared at the phone with evident malice. "Sir, I want you to listen to me and I want you to listen to me very carefully. I had never injected a drug before last night. I snorted cocaine maybe three times a week and used hallucinogens, club drugs, or prescription pills weekly, if that. It all started when I walked in on Mandy doing coke in a museum bathroom and she asked me if I wanted some. My first instinct was to say no but then I figured, 'hey, what do I have to lose? I've already lost everything anyway.' So she brought me to a party where I met Picasso. Before I left, he handed me his contact information and Mandy ..." Emily paused suddenly, confused. "Mandy said she was _jealous_. Told me how selective he was about his clientele and how she'd been trying to get herself on his list for a long time. But ... but whenever I dropped by for a pickup, she was ... there. With him."

"Did you ever - even once - reveal any aspects of your personal life to either of them?"

Emily struggled to remember. Those dazzling glimmering Ecstasy nights, those colorful painted acid days, those jabbering jaw-aching cocaine weekends ... _Had _she ever disclosed any information about her true identity? Or had she indeed managed to keep Emily Prentiss firmly buried underneath that gravel headstone back in Washington, D.C. while she played the part of the bubbly innocent Leigh?

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck no.

Spencer felt her chest rapidly rising and falling against his before he heard her start to hyperventilate. He stepped back and held her shoulders tightly, staring into her panicking eyes while whispering, "Shhh. Look at me, Emily. Stay with me, baby."

It was the "baby" that jarred her out of her impending panic attack, permitting a moment of relaxation before another wave of anxiety overcame her as her glance shifted between Spencer's chestnut brown eyes and the black iPhone, her jaw dropping helplessly as she shook her head like she was trying to shake away the very word itself. _No, no, no ..._

"Did he just call her 'baby'?" she heard Morgan's distinct voice asking in the background, incredulous.

They were on speakerphone, too.

"Pretend," Spencer mouthed.

_"What _did you just call me?" Emily shrieked, feigning fury. "Maybe that shit flies at your AA meetings but in case you didn't notice, Spencer? We're not at a fucking AA meeting. And I'm not your goddamn 'sponsee'. And whatever little crush you might have on me doesn't mean that I will _ever _fucking feel sorry enough for you to let you call me your 'baby' just because you also know what it's like to stick a needle in your arm."

He actually flinched at that. Until he felt her lips moving forward to kiss him silently, until he reached up to stroke her cheek and felt the river of tears spilling from her eyes, until he glanced down and watched her pinch the back of her arm with such force her skin turned white. Until he was able to shake away the small kernel of insecurity that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't been acting when she uttered that last line.

"If you two are finished fighting in the playground, I'm still waiting for Emily to answer my question," Hotch's annoyed voice interjected.

"There was one incident where I mentioned my past," she said quietly. "Mandy and I were high on K ... um, I mean, we had taken Ketamine, sir. At the River Seine. And we'd decided that in order to truly attain freedom, we needed to write a code in the sand as a message to the universe, relinquishing the one thing that could keep us chained here."

"Okay," Hotch said apprehensively.

"Well, My word was DESPAJR. D-E-S-P-A-J-R."

"Desp ... ajar? That's not a word," Spencer said, visibly confused.

"No, like 'despair' with a 'j' instead of an 'i'," Emily corrected him. "Derek. Emily. Spencer. Penelope. Aaron. JJ. Rossi." Emily stopped abruptly, her face turning white. "Mandy asked what it meant. I told her it signified despair left ajar. And I recited our names. Oh, god. I recited our full names. She didn't ask what they meant because we'd already started to enter the K-hole ... um, I mean, the dissociative fugue state associated with Ketamine ingestion ... but I broke cover and I recited our names. All of them."

She could hear the collective gasp of her teammates through the cell phone and a part of her died inside, knowing the extent to which she'd betrayed them. Far beyond the extent to which she'd already betrayed them by faking her death.

"What was Mandy's word?" Spencer asked, curious. For once, he was the only one willing to forgive her, the only one still capable of thinking like a profiler despite her unprecedented breech of security.

"Dabby," Emily replied instantly. "I thought she'd reversed the two 'd's into 'b's but when I pointed it out she said it was intentional. That it meant 'Dad' and 'Abby'. I'd never heard her say that name before and I never heard her say it again after that night, so I don't know why it was significant to her."

The collective intake of breath heard from across the Atlantic Ocean was a clear indication that her colleagues did, in fact, have some theories regarding the significance of the name.

"Emily? Reid? You there?"

It was Rossi's soothing voice, a welcome reprieve from Hotch's austere and brutal tone.

"We're here," they responded in unison.

"I'm going to fill you in on some of the details we've uncovered. First, Amanda is not an only child. She has a twin sister. Abigail. Abby."

"She never ... she never told me that," Emily insisted, resting her head on Spencer's chest. Suddenly, she was so very, very overwhelmed.

"I'm not surprised. You see, Abby was the golden child," Rossi explained.

"That's amazing," Spencer interrupted excitedly. "Did you know that the Hebrew origin of the name 'Abigail' is 'her father's joy'?"

"No, but thank you for that irrelevant piece of information, Reid. Anyway, Abigail graduated from Scarsdale High School as a junior and began her pre-med coursework at Princeton the following year, whereas Mandy was left back, forced to repeat her junior year due to excess absences and poor grades. It started when she began buying Adderall from this kid in Yonkers. Bobby. Really popular drug with those rich kids, that Adderall. But then she also started using Xanax, Klonopin, Vicodin, and OxyContin and quickly ventured into non-prescripion drugs like Ecstasy and cocaine. Mandy began dating Bobby and that's when she started skipping school and failing tests. So during her repeat junior year, Mandy was already two years behind her sister academically. When she began her studies at Sarah Lawrence College as a freshman ..."

"... where her acceptance can, by the way, be directly correlated with her father's prominence in the Westchester community and his extremely generous gift to the liberal arts college to construct their new visual arts building," JJ's voice interjected.

"But it's not exactly like Sarah Lawrence is Princeton, where it's all about the numbers," Morgan reminded them. "Mandy included an outstanding art portfolio and a strong recommendation from her art teacher as part of her application. That, in itself, could have been enough to get into the first college to make the SATs optional because, in their words, 'they discriminate against poor test-takers and don't accurately predict how a prospective student will perform in college'."

"Which is true," Garcia contributed, somewhat defensively. "I'm a CalTech dropout who hacked my way onto the FBI's Most Wanted List before being offered the opportunity to come over to the dark side myself ... or, you know, spend the next twenty-five years to life trying not to drop the soap."

Emily lifted her head off of Spencer's chest, where she'd been quietly absorbing all of this new information and very seriously considering the possibility of resigning. But the moment they gazed at one another and broke into broad, twinkle-eyed grins, Emily instinctively knew that she was exactly where she belonged: both as a member of this crazy cast of characters she called her BAU family ... and in Spencer's arms.

"Anyway," Rossi continued, "due to her high school AP exemptions, Abigail started college on an accelerated track and graduated from Princeton in three years with a major in pre-medicine and a minor in French. So as Amanda was beginning her studies at Sarah Lawrence, Abigail was spending her final year of college preparing to enroll in L'Université Pierre et Marie Curie, which is the top medical school in France and arguably one of the best in the world. Not only is it incredibly difficult to get into, but the curriculum itself is designed to progressively weed out the weakest students. 80% don't even make it past the first year."

"She must have been pretty confident in her ability to succeed, then," Spencer mused, clearly impressed.

"Oh, she had every reason to be," JJ confirmed. "She maintained a 4.0 GPA at Princeton and even managed to land herself a spot in that oh-so-exclusive 'perfect MCAT score' club of yours, Reid."

"Is she single?" Spencer joked, prompting a death stare from Emily as the rest of the team roared with laughter over the iPhone.

"Sorry, pretty boy," Morgan finally answered. "You're too late. After what happened to her, your potential soulmate's got more issues than Playboy."

_Potential soulmate? _Emily seethed enviously. After watching an unmistakable blush color Spencer's cheeks, she decided that she'd had just about enough of this conversation and wriggled away from Spencer's embrace, dropping to her knees and lightly tracing her mouth over the cotton material of his briefs. When her hot breath caused his cock to spring to attention, straining against the confining fabric, he groaned out a warning that the rest of the team interpreted as a sound of discontent at the news.

"Tell them how she ended up taking the MCATs," Garcia prompted, wisely diverting their attention away from Spencer's love life - or perceived lack thereof.

Rossi picked up where they'd left off. "After her freshman year of college, Mandy announced that she wanted to pursue art design. Despite her rampant drug use and spotty attendance record, her actual artistic work was highly regarded by her professors, who encouraged her to consider pursuing postgraduate work at Parsons School of Design. But that wasn't good enough for her father. He wanted her to prepare for a 'real' career - so, trying to earn his love and respect, she decided to go pre-med herself."

Spencer had been rendered incapable of speech, unable to inform his team members that the origin of the name Amanda was, somewhat tragically, derived from a Latin term meaning 'worthy of love'. With Emily now _licking _the outline of his cock over his briefs, he could only thrust his hips forward against the warm wetness of her mouth and utter another groan of pleasure.

"I know. Bad idea, right?" Rossi responded, oblivious to the real reason behind Spencer's throaty noises. "Well, she ended up with a solid string of C's and D's and a strong warning from her academic advisor that, unless she miraculously scored well on the MCATs, she shouldn't even bother applying to medical school."

"Ohhhh," Spencer breathed out helplessly as Emily freed him from the constraints of his underwear and slowly ran her hot, wet tongue along the length of his shaft.

"Well, before you start feeling bad for her, listen to this," Rossi continued, again misinterpreting the sounds on the other end of the line. "Amanda implored her identical twin to fly back to New York and take the MCATs for her, guilt-tripping her about how she just wanted to make their father proud of her for once in her life."

"Please," Spencer whispered raggedly, in a tone louder than he intended. "Please."

"Good, you're getting into her mind," Hotch suddenly intoned, the unwelcome intrusion of his voice over the speakerphone almost enough to deflate Spencer's raging hard-on, had it not been for Emily's mouth sucking him hard and fast and deep.

"Based on information from Mandy's boyfriend and corroborating data from both Homeland Security and the AAMC, Abby flew to New York and met up with her sister, where they exchanged driver's licenses and Social Security cards so Abby could take the MCATs using Mandy's identity. After meeting up with her sister again after the test, she took an overnight flight back to Paris to continue her medical training. So, a month later, when Mandy logged on to the AAMC website and discovered that she - or, rather, her sister - had scored in the top 1%, she immediately posted the news to her Facebook page. The barrage of comments she received from her former Scarsdale High School classmates and friends in the surrounding area ..." Rossi sighed.

"It was online bullying to the worst degree," JJ reported sadly. "Except that a lot of it ... Well, a lot of it was true. Mostly involving accusations that her identical twin had taken the exam for her. Here's one from a Jennifer Thomas, whose father was murdered two months ago: 'Yeah right! The bitch who fucked Aaron F so he'd let her cheat during the Chem final in HS got a 37 on the MCATs? I think she had her smarty sis take the test for her like she said she was gonna do if Aaron hadn't been stupid enough to go near her AIDS infected pussy.'"

Spencer bit down on his hand, determined not to lose control, as the muscles in Emily's throat unexpectedly squeezed and released against his cock at the very moment an abrupt, intense throb of excitement resonated throughout his body. Their eyes met, bright with lust and desire, conveying the same guiltily telepathic message: _god, it's hot to hear JJ say the word 'pussy,' isn't it?_

Emily didn't experience any jealousy whatsoever when Spencer's cock pulsated against the soft tissue in the back of her throat, lubricating it with a fresh cascade of pre-come after they heard JJ stumble over a word she'd never otherwise utter out loud. For some reason, perhaps because of the awkward date that JJ and Spencer had shared years before Emily joined the BAU - a date that had, JJ later confided, "sealed their fate as platonic friends" - Emily didn't feel as though her blonde colleague posed a threat to her. Besides, it wasn't like _she'd_ never fantasized about their media liaison before; actually, while she instinctively knew she could never, ever reveal this to Spencer, it excited the hell out of her to think about inviting JJ into their bedroom for one night. The very fact that she was both undeniably sexy and uniquely non-threatening made her the ideal person for a threesome.

To Emily, at least. Emily, who could easily separate love from sex. Even after JJ half-whispered the word 'pussy' and her own pooled with a sudden stream of moisture, it took several moments for Spencer to blink away the wounded expression of hurt that crossed his face when Emily gripped his cock with her left hand so she could reach down and rub circles around her clit with her right. He was so innocent, so fragile about the idea of sex without love, about the concept of experience versus intimacy, so terrified about the prospect that he wouldn't be, couldn't be "enough" for Emily. How could he possibly understand that she'd tried, as Ani DiFranco once sang, "all thirty-two flavors and then some" until she finally discovered the flavor of ice cream she liked best in Spencer?

And he hadn't even dared to ask her the one question that had been in the forefront of his mind ever since she told him about Laleh, the question of whether she preferred sex with men or with women ...

Yes, Spencer was very threatened by JJ. As far as he was concerned, it didn't matter that she was straight or practically married or devoted to her son. Because he really believed that Emily Prentiss would have had the power to seduce Mother Theresa if she'd really wanted to.

"There were also numerous snide references to her drug use. For example, one from Stephanie Fletcher, also murdered: 'Get real. All of the Adderall in the world couldn't have gotten her a score above 20. She cheated on that test just like she did on every test she ever took.' Mandy didn't read the comments until she returned from a celebratory dinner with her father and we believe she may have panicked, knowing that her father would read those comments himself when he logged onto Facebook the following morning. We believe that she murdered him to prevent him from discovering that she'd disappointed him yet again. Given the amount of Xanax, alcohol, and Percocet found in Mandy's system after the 911 call the next morning, the Westchester police - unaware of her extraordinarily high tolerance to drugs - concluded that it would have been physically impossible for her to be involved in or even aware of the incident. And as for your soulmate, Spencer?"

Emily's eyes flashed as she briefly squeezed Spencer's balls with her left hand, prompting a high-pictched yelp.

"She went crazy, man," Morgan said. "Came back to Scarsdale and while Mandy stayed at her boyfriend's place, she just sat in that big house alone, sleeping in her father's bed for weeks. Not eating or even speaking. Like she was in a trace. After she tried to off herself twice with Mandy's hidden drug stash, she was involuntarily committed to a longer-term facility. She's having electroshock therapy now but it doesn't seem to be helping her any."

"Mmmmhhhhmmmm," Spencer moaned, his body starting to tingle as Emily swallowed his cock and lifted her tongue to apply pressure to the pulsating vein underneath.

"And at first we couldn't figure out why so many of the 'top 1%' candidates have recently been in Westchester, but after Garcia did a little digging, she found out that Amanda changed their scores in the AAMC database," Morgan continued. "Her motive was simple: revenge. She wanted to give them one night of pride and happiness that would then forever be associated with the worst tragedy of their lives."

Emily pulled away, wiping her mouth, as Spencer silently begged, "No ... No, don't stop ..."

"How does Picasso factor into this?" she asked, looking directly at the iPhone and ignoring Spencer's pleading eyes. "How do _I_ factor into this?"

"We think Picasso is a former professor of alchemy and pharmacology at L'Université Pierre et Marie Curie. I ran the image of him ... um, the image of him injecting you with drugs and found a match. Professor Dupont. He was fired shortly after Mandy's father was killed," Garcia responded. "Because - get this - he was caught having an affair with a student."

"So ... there was one time when Abigail was a bad girl, after all," Emily noted, wickedly licking her lips. "A verrrrry bad girl."

Spencer had to chomp down on the inside of his cheeks to prevent himself from whimpering.

"Actually, no," JJ corrected her. "He was discovered having sex on the desk in his classroom with one of their brightest, most promising students. A student they believed to be Abigail Bernard. Except ... by that time, Abby was already locked away in a psychiatric hospital. We think Mandy specifically targeted him, either because she knew he was dealing drugs on the side or because she knew he had the resources and connections to obtain the drugs she wanted while protecting her from France's drug laws."

"You should consider yourself fortunate to have survived that overdose, Agent Prentiss, because it's fairly clear that it was not an accident by any means," Hotch's stern voice informed her. "After you left Paris, Mandy didn't even take the precaution of using an Internet cafe to google information about the open investigation - or to google our names. The names that you provided her yourself. On the very day of your departure, an IP address we've traced back to an apartment owned by Professor Dupont accessed your FBI memorial page seventeen times before we removed it from the site. It contained a photograph and biographical information, which confirmed your true identity."

"And, come on, Emily ... Just remember how shocked we were when we found out you were still alive," Morgan offered gently. "Now imagine spending almost every day with a person for six months only to discover that they weren't only a former FBI agent, but a _dead _FBI agent at that. Doesn't take a coke habit to result in a little paranoia, you know?"

Yeah. She knew.

Unable to continue touching herself or do anything more than merely holding Spencer's dick in her hand, Emily felt bereft in some strange way, almost as though she'd lost something crucial, something she couldn't quite describe ...

And as for Spencer? Even though he had to resist the impulse to reach down and relieve the urgent need to come, he, too, felt like something had been lost. But unlike Emily, he could identify exactly what it was. That one brief moment before the phone rang when he truly felt connected to her, like all of the barriers had been torn down and she didn't have to use sex as a weapon or a distraction. That moment when he truly, naively believed that she'd never feel like she had to again.

And now, although he wanted to cry out for her to finish the blowjob he'd been receiving during the phone call with all of his coworkers, he couldn't help but feel unnerved by the extent to which she could manipulate him with her lips, her hands, her body ... unnerved by this unprecedented power she held over him. Spencer had never imagined that the controlled restraint he'd so carefully cultivated over the years could be completely demolished within the span of only a few days.

Almost as if she could read his mind, Emily snapped out of her trance and lightly ran her short fingernails along the side of his dick, gripping him with both hands before slowly moving her mouth down his shaft, little by little, until she'd swallowed the length of him. Watching her ravish him with her perfect heart-shaped mouth, Spencer noticed, for the first time, the frenzied desperation in her rhythmic movements ... like she needed him to get off just as much as he needed to get off.

He was far too busy controlling his breathing to entertain the fleeting and disturbing revelation that maybe, just maybe, this was the only way that Spencer could really show Emily how much he loved her. That maybe this was the only kind of love she believed she deserved.

"In light of these recent developments, Agent Prentiss, I think you'll understand why we'll have to remove you from ..."

Emily abruptly stopped, panic flooding her eyes. "Hotch? Agent Hotchner? You're breaking up. Oh shit, the phone's beeping. I think the battery's dying. Spencer, did you remember to bring the converter for the charger? 'Cause my phone's dead, too."

"Hunnnnnhhh?" he managed to respond, his mind hazy. _What is she talking about? The phone isn't beeping. And Emily's phone isn't dead, either. Plus, she has a European socket converter for our iPhones in her bag. So why would she ... ?_

"Goddamn it, Spencer!" Emily shouted with frustration, her speech pressured and urgent. "Garcia, how long will it take you to secure the hotel phone line and call us back?"

"Uh, I don't know if I can encrypt the signal but if I ..."

"How _long, _Garcia?" Emily insisted, frantic.

"Thirty minutes. Maybe forty-five," Garcia blurted out anxiously.

"OK, we'll be waiting for your ..." And then Emily leaned over toward the nightstand and pressed the "End Call" button without finishing her sentence.

"What was that ...?" Spencer started to ask, his sentence trailing off after she looked at him helplessly and he saw the tears welling up in her eyes.

"We have thirty to forty-five minutes before they're going to tell me that it's not safe for me to be in Paris, that I need to get on a plane and return to Quantico while they fly here to join you on this case," Emily said softly, standing up. "I can't ... I mean, I knew it couldn't be like this forever but ... but the idea of just rushing out of here and being without you again ..." She shuddered involuntarily. "Spencer, even if it's only for half an hour, I just want to feel your arms around me and think about nothing but how fucking much I love you right now in this moment."

Spencer smiled with such gratitude that Emily couldn't help but smile back. Because he just wanted to put his arms around her and think about nothing but how fucking much he loved her right now in this moment, too.

"Good," she stated with finality, as though the matter had been settled. "Because after I finish making you come so hard you won't be able to remember your name, we're both going to forget everyone and everything else in this world so when we're apart, for as long as we're apart, all we'll have to do is think back to that one moment and it'll be like we're together again."

Spencer grabbed her hands, pressing his soft lips against hers over and over again, and in between kisses he murmured quietly, so quietly she almost missed it, "Will a memory survive." Kiss. "One I can." Kiss. "Hold onto." Kiss.

Emily pulled away from him, visibly touched. "Spencer ... ?" she half-gasped, her implicit question unspoken yet understood.

Spencer pointed to his iPhone, ducking his head slightly. "Last night when I couldn't sleep, I downloaded _The Bodyguard."_

"No, you didn't!" she laughed, her eyes shining with amusement and her heart overflowing with love.

"I did," he admitted. "And you know what else?"

"What?" Emily asked, keeping her eyes locked on his and gently sucking on his lower lip.

"I cried at the ending, too. I mean, I know that people consider it a love story but ... but I never, ever, ever want it to be our love story."

"So you'll be my bodyguard forever?" she teased.

"If you'll be mine," he responded sincerely, without any trace of humor in his voice.

"Deal," she agreed, her eyes glimmering, wide and bright. "Now let's get in bed already."

"So you can make me 'come so hard I forget my name'?" Spencer whispered, kissing her and holding her body so close she could feel him pressed up against her stomach.

"Exactly," Emily whispered back.

"That sounds good to me. 'Cause Emily?" He paused.

"Yeah, Spencer?"

"The only name I'll ever need to remember again ... is yours."

Emily responded by pulling him down onto the bed and devouring his mouth with long, deep, intimate kisses.

My god, she loved him. She loved him more than she'd ever loved anyone in her entire life.

And it terrified the hell out of her.


	16. Loved

Emily forcefully pushed Spencer down onto the bed, leaving a trail of light, fluttery kisses down his chest to his stomach to his ...

"No, wait ..." Spencer groaned, gripping her shoulders with his lean, long fingertips. "Not like that."

She gazed up at him, perplexed. "Not like what?"

"I don't want to come like that," he hissed, trying desperately to thwart the ever-increasing sense of urgency in his groin.

"Why?" Emily asked, furrowing her eyebrows.

"I don't ... I don't like the idea of you on your knees. It's degrading. Morgan says that women don't even _like _giving bl- ... I mean, that women don't enjoy performing oral sex," Spencer answered hesitantly, unable to bring himself to say the word 'blowjob'.

"I think," she replied, taking him in her mouth and running her lips from the base of his cock to the tip, licking circles around it with her tongue as she challenged him with those dark shining eyes, "I think you need to stop paying attention to Morgan's bullshit sex seminars. Because I love doing it. And I especially love ..." Emily paused, sucking him deeply and pressing two fingers against the sensitive area behind his balls, "doing it with you."

Spencer couldn't suppress the high-pitched squeal that emerged from his throat and it took every ounce of willpower he could muster not to come all over her face right then and there. He grabbed hold of her hand, immobilizing it, and stammered, "But I want to ... to watch. You. On top. I want to watch you ... on top of me."

Emily paused at that, marveling at how different he was from the other men she'd been with. How loving, how caring, how generous. And during the brief moment she remained lost in her thoughts, Spencer took the opportunity to pull her up to him with trembling hands, kissing her mouth, kissing her neck, kissing the cotton material covering her shoulders, all while stroking the smooth skin of her back underneath her shirt. When he rotated his hips upward to slide his hard member against her wet heat, the stifled moan that escaped her throat generated a throb of desire that resonated through his entire body.

Although she was on top, Spencer was unquestionably the one in control. He was the one who straightened his back and eased them both into a sitting position so he could grasp the bottom of that grey and blue Georgetown shirt and raise it over Emily's breasts, grinning awkwardly when it caught against the back of her head and freed her wavy coal-black hair from its loose ponytail before he lifted it over her outstretched arms and tossed it across the room. He was the one who kissed his way from her shoulders to her wrists, making a point of flicking his pillowy mouth across the track marks that dotted her veins and then holding her face in his hands as he brushed his lips back and forth against hers, shaking his head no. No, no, no. Never again, no.

"I promise," Emily whispered quietly against his mouth, understanding perfectly.

And he was the one who began to trace Emily's breasts with his fingers while she simply watched, passively enraptured, as he cupped one in each palm and rubbed her straining nipples with his thumbs. Both hands stroking her in unison, like a perfectly-choreographed ballet. He finally acquiesced to her pleading mews and lowered his mouth to one of her perfectly-rounded breasts, using his tongue to repeat the same movements he'd made with his hands only moments earlier.

Spencer kept his hazel eyes trained on Emily's face as he ministered to her breasts, watching in satisfaction when she tilted her head toward the ceiling, her shiny black hair cascading down her back. He could feel her clit growing larger and more prominent, could feel her silky warm moisture coating the underside of his dick as she continued to grind herself against him. He inhaled sharply at the unrelenting stimulation, his self-control waning. The very knowledge that he could excite her like this aroused him beyond belief, even now, even after everything that had transpired between them.

"Lay down," Emily insisted, placing her palms against his chest. "We don't have much time."

She grasped him carefully in her right hand, slowly lowering her body onto his until he filled her with his entire length. "That feels ... so good," she gasped, falling forward to cover Spencer's eager open mouth with her own as he nodded vigorously in agreement.

When they began to move together, Emily kept her body close to his, her breasts pushing up against his chest, her clit rubbing against his abdomen, their lips and tongues mimicking the frenzied rhythmic thrusting of their hips. Spencer knew he wasn't going to last very long, not at this frantic pace, especially not after being denied release for so long. Even his attempts to conjure up images of crime scenes from the darkest recesses of his memory weren't working, not with Emily murmuring "mmmmhhh"s and "unnnnhhh"s of pleasure in his ear.

Roughly, instinctively, he shoved her into an upright position while he remained on his back, pinching her clit between his thumb and forefinger and tugging on it like he was jerking her off. Emily cried out so loudly he was sure all of Paris could hear her before she shoved her upper body closer to his face, breathlessly urging him, "suck on my nipples ... do it hard ... really, really hard ..."

Not wanting to hurt her, Spencer took one of her nipples between his lips and suckled it with intensity, stopping immediately when he heard her whimper, unsure if the noise was one of pleasure or one of pain. "Use your teeth," Emily demanded, gritting her jaw. Remembering what she'd said earlier about the "good kind" of pain, he tentatively bit down on her hard pink nub and pulled it away from her outstretched breast, sending a current of electric shockwaves throughout her body.

Spencer kept rubbing his fingers rapidly, brutally, mercilessly against her clit in pace with their accelerated gyrations and when he felt her muscles tighten against him, squeezing him, the sudden pressure caused him to bite down on her nipple with slightly more force than he'd intended. When he released it from his mouth and noticed the teeth-marked bruise he'd left there, a string of apologies formed in his chest until he heard her moan, "Oh, yes ... Oh, god, yes ... Don't stop ... I'm so close ... Don't stop fucking me ... Don't ever stop fucking me ..." With those words, Spencer barely had a chance to grunt out a warning that he was about to come - and he was about to come _hard._

His fingers squeezed and kneaded her clit erratically as he shot his first long stream deep inside of her, followed in quick succession by a series of shorter spurts, with everything around him becoming fuzzy, distant, his entire body clenching as trails of his hot sticky semen drizzled out of her and back down onto his stomach. Spencer kept pumping and pummeling his cock upward, riding each new orgasmic tide higher and higher until the last exquisite dribble trickled out of his body and he collapsed limply against the bed, exhausted.

Emily was right: he could barely remember his own fucking name. It was like he'd been hit with a baseball bat. He was, however, acutely aware that she hadn't come yet, so once the tremors in his body began to subside, he growled, his head still spinning, "I want you to sit on my face."

_Where the hell did that come from? _he wondered even as he spoke the words. _Did I really just say that out loud?_

Spencer's apprehension was immediately assuaged; Emily dismounted his half-hard erection and kneeled over his face with urgency, her knees on each side of his head and her hands flattened against the wall for leverage. He could see the traces of his orgasm mixed with her own arousal, and when she moved into a sitting position, rubbing herself against his nose and allowing him to breathe in her beautiful, tangy, erotic scent, he felt a painful stirring in his already-sore balls.

She was in charge now, humping her body against his open-mouthed lips, his tongue, and when he eventually managed to grip her clit between his teeth, Emily rose up and crashed back down onto him, over and over again, nearly sobbing from the incredible sensation before drenching his nose, his mouth, his chin with her warm sweet fluid. After being overtaken by that first quivering, shaking convulsion, she moved one hand off the wall and grabbed a fistful of Spencer's hair, riding his face so hard he thought she might break his nose.

She came and came and came, for at least a full minute, covering Spencer's mouth and chin and nose with the moist heat leaking from her cunt until Spencer's jaw ached from the effort of keeping her twitching clit locked between his front teeth.

But it was worth it. Every second of it was worth it.

The sloppy, slippery wetness covering his face ... the unique, intoxicating scent filling his nostrils ... the howls of bliss resonating throughout his eardrums ... _My god, _Spencer wondered, _how the fuck does Morgan _not _love everything about this?_

As the violent shivers continued to rack Emily's body, Spencer realized that his cock had begun to stiffen and rise anew. He groaned, the vibrations of his mouth against Emily's pussy triggering yet another orgasm just as her last one had started to subside: this one not as paralyzing, not as needy, almost like the final upside-down loop of a roller coaster ride versus that heart-pounding thrilling fall after the initial stomach-churning ascent. But it was when she shouted, "I love you, I love you, I love you" that, almost impossibly, and without any tactile stimulation at all, Spencer felt himself pulsing and twitching, coming without any fluid escaping his body. Just the brief and unexpected throbbing bliss of a man left utterly spent.

Emily stopped gyrating against his face and had started to raise her body off of him, trying to catch her breath, when he took hold of her hips and held her in place, slowly and lovingly licking her, dipping his tongue inside of her and swallowing the creamy residue of her orgasm, relishing the taste of her on his tongue. It was, after all, going to be a long time before he had a chance to taste her again.

He tried to banish that thought from his mind, not wanting to consider how precious this time was, how fast the minutes seemed to be ticking away on the clock next to the bed.

After he'd licked and licked and licked her clean, Spencer let go, allowing her to slide onto the bed beside him and curl her body against his, kissing the protective forearm wrapped around her. "You didn't have to do that, you know," Emily told him in a husky whisper.

"No ... I did," he confided. "You know I've always been able to read maps or music or books and memorize them immediately ... but I've never been able to remember what they meant to me, what they made me _feel _when I was finished with them. So I don't want to just remember 'reading' your body, Emily. I want to remember your taste, your smell, your touch - and mostly? I want to remember what it made me feel. What it makes me feel."

"What does it make you feel?" Emily questioned in a shy, insecure, little-girl voice.

"Well, I came with you, even though you didn't touch me. A - um, a dry orgasm, I think it's called," Spencer confessed, his cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

"Oh my god," Emily murmured. "That's so fucking hot."

"I mean, I was completely drained," Spencer continued, the blush that had initially colored his face and his neck fading when he saw the unabashed lust in her eyes, when he saw the way she discreetly clenched her legs together in excitement. "I really thought it would be another month before I could even get ... before I could even have another erection. But - well, just kiss me and you'll understand."

Emily moved in to kiss him, tasting herself on his lips, on his tongue, inhaling her strong salty scent against his face. "Yeah?" she wondered aloud, withdrawing and gazing into his gleaming chestnut eyes.

"If I could bottle that up and pour some of it on my face, I wouldn't even _need _you," Spencer groaned without thinking about the words he'd just spoken aloud.

"Oh, you wouldn't need me?" she teased, running her fingers through his light brown hair. "What, you'd buy one of those Real Dolls and ask me to masturbate in my panties so you could jerk off into the plastic while holding them to your nose? So that's all I am to you, huh?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "You know what I was trying ..." he started to clarify. And then he felt her hand on his chest, right over his heart.

"I was kidding, Spencer," Emily chided.

When he opened his eyes to the bemused expression on her face, Spencer placed his own hand over hers, squeezing it gently. "You are everything to me, Emily."

And with that, her face just ... crumbled. The corners of her mouth quivered and tears welled up in her brown eyes. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out, leaving her jaw dangling helplessly as the droplets spilled down her cheeks.

"Everything," he repeated, gravely serious.

"I don't ... I don't want to go," she choked out in response, burying her face in his neck. "I don't want to leave you."

"I know, baby," he whispered, his hand comfortingly stroking her back. "I know."

"No, you _don't _know!" Emily cried loudly, raising her head to look at him. "You don't know what it's like to ... to live your whole life never feeling safe, never feeling secure, never feeling like you could really trust anyone. But now I know, Spencer. Now I know what that feels like. And in about fifteen minutes when the phone rings, I'm going to have to return to Quantico alone and I ... I just can't ..."

"Shhh," he murmured soothingly, lightly kissing the tears from her damp cheeks, from the closed lids of her eyelashes, wanting to be strong for her, wanting to fight back the tears stinging his own eyes ... but, more than anything, wanting to just disconnect the stupid phone and fall asleep holding her while she kept _him _safe from the horrifying nightmares that had plagued him for years.

Emily opened her eyes and, seeing the same desperate agony reflected back at her, proclaimed, "I'm not leaving. I don't care what Hotch says. I'm not leaving you to go back to my lonely apartment in DC where I'll probably get out of the car, run right into some dealer on my street corner, and end up sniffing dope the second ..."

"You promised!" Spencer exclaimed, fear rising in his chest like a tsunami.

"You were _fucking _me! That doesn't count!" Emily huffed defiantly. "Haven't you been listening to what I've been saying? Don't you understand by now? I'm fucked up. I'm broken. I can't ..."

"Oh, no," he warned, anger seeping into his voice. "You don't get to play that card forever, Emily. You do not get to do whatever it is you feel like doing without thinking about how it will affect other people - without thinking about how it will affect _me _- while refusing to take responsibility for your behavior. 'Cause you know what? We're all broken. All of us. And if you want to stay that way, then ..."

"Then what?" she challenged him.

"Then I can't be with you," he said softly, sadly.

Emily's mouth dropped open and she wriggled away from him, furiously storming over to the hotel room phone to tear the line out of the wall, disconnecting it.

"What are you doing?" Spencer asked in disbelief, even though he himself had considered doing the very same thing only minutes earlier.

But for very different reasons, of course. And in a very different mood.

"This is a conversation we need to have. Right now." Her eyes were like matchbooks set aflame, her mouth as thin as a garment stitch. "Why do you want to be with me, Spencer?"

The question caught him completely off-guard. "Why do I ... _what? _Because I love you, that's why!"

Emily grew thoughtful, subdued. "Do you really love me, though? Or do you love the person you want me to be?"

"I fell in love with you long before we came to Paris, Emily," Spencer reminded her, chewing on his bottom lip before adding, "and yet ever since we arrived, I can't help but wonder if I fell in love with the person you are or the person you wanted us all to think you were. Are you, in fact, Emily Prentiss? Or are you Lauren Reynolds? Are you Leigh? Or are you someone else entirely?"

"I am Emily Prentiss," she insisted. "I am. It's just that ... When I returned from my assignment with Interpol, they knew everything - or almost everything - I'd done as Lauren Reynolds. They knew who I was before I left for Italy and who I'd been forced to become when I was there ... and it still took months of debriefing to fully leave her behind. But Spencer, no one knew what I did or who I'd become as Leigh except for you. I hadn't fully left her behind. And a month later, we're assigned this case, of all cases ..."

"But Emily, if you'd taken your therapy sessions with the Bureau psychologist seriously or if you'd spoken to Hotch about the things you did when you were undercover or if you'd bothered to tell the rest of the team about your connection to Mandy before we got on that jet," Spencer interrupted, frustration creeping into his voice, "then we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now!"

"We wouldn't be doing a lot of things right now," Emily retorted snidely.

"You're right," he said wistfully, almost regretfully. "And you know what I've realized about that?"

He waited to continue until after she rolled her eyes sarcastically and spit out, "What, Spencer? What have you realized?"

"I've realized that we were actually much closer during those Friday Night Fix-It Nights than we've been since we left for Paris." When Emily uttered a short, harsh laugh, he locked his unsmiling eyes with hers. The sound from her throat reverberated and dissipated into the air as it sunk in that he was serious. "I mean it. Ever since we arrived, I've noticed that you tend to ... well, that you tend to use sex as a substitute for intimacy."

Her eyes widened and she snarled back at him, "You have _got _to be kidding me. I'm sorry, but who was the one who initiated what happened between us on the plane? Who was the one who said, 'let me be your OxyContin'?"

"Because, Emily ..." Spencer struggled to find the right words. "When you agreed to flush those drugs so I wouldn't relapse, I felt so much gratitude, so much love for you. But the thing is ... I never wanted it to go this far."

A sharp glint of raw pain appeared in Emily's eyes. "You never wanted it to go this far," she repeated flatly, her heart sinking into her stomach. "So you didn't have sex with me because you were in love with me; you had sex with me to reward me for getting rid of those pills and to distract me from doing drugs again after I OD'ed. It wasn't love; it was relapse prevention."

"No, no, that's not what I meant!" Spencer put his head in his hands, yelling directly at the plush carpet. "I was already in love with you before you disappeared to Paris. Jesus, Emily, I was ready to _kill myself _because I couldn't imagine a world without you in it ... I just didn't know how to tell you that." He lifted his gaze to meet her flashing eyes, his tone and his face conveying such boyish sincerity that, despite herself, Emily felt her hurt and anger drifting away. "And I did want to have sex with you - believe me, I wanted to have sex with you more than anything - but I wanted it to be special. I wanted it to be an expression of love. I never wanted it to become your substitute for drugs. _I_ never wanted to become your substitute for drugs."

"It didn't! You didn't! And it is special with you, Spencer. My god, it is so, so special with you. Listen, I've spent most of my life using sex as a substitute for love," Emily blurted out, staring at his mismatched socks to avoid his curious eyes. "And, over time, I forced myself to forget how much better it can be when there's love involved. So maybe you're right. Maybe the sex is so good that it has become a kind of substitute for drugs, but why is that a bad thing? I didn't believe you loved me, didn't even believe you could love me, until you let yourself 'lose control' with me. Because I knew what it meant to you ... but I still don't think you understand what it meant to me."

"Then tell me," he offered, reaching out his long arms and motioning for her to come to him, which she did with feigned reluctance, secretly grateful that he'd made the first overture.

Sitting next to Spencer on the bed, wrapped tightly into his body with her arm across his abdomen and her head nestled into his chest, Emily found herself once again struck by how fucking safe she felt when he held her. She'd never trusted him like this in the field before - and even now, she still wouldn't trust him to be the first person to storm into an unsub's apartment or to fire his weapon if they both had a chance to take the shot - but this was so very different from physical safety, which had long ago become second nature to her. This was emotional safety.

This was ... Well, this was love.

"I've had sex with other people before, Spencer. I've had ... I've had sex with a lot of other people before," she admitted, shame creeping into her voice. "But I remember what it was like the first time, the only other time I had sex with someone I loved. I remember what it was like when I realized that, before Laleh, I'd been tricked into thinking that sex was a substitute for love ... what it was like when I realized that I didn't even know the difference between sex and love until I met her. I never confused sex with love again, but I ..." Her voice trailed off.

"But you what?"

Emily cringed in anticipation, hating herself for what she was about to say. "I didn't think I could ever fall in love again ... and I didn't ever want to fall in love again ... but I still wanted to be loved. I still wanted to _feel _loved. So when I told you that I used sex as a substitute for love? It wasn't only to protect myself from being hurt. It was also sometimes a way ... a way of tricking other people into thinking they'd fallen in love with me."

"Did you do that with me?" Spencer asked delicately, holding his breath and bracing himself for the worst.

"No! I mean ... maybe. I mean, I don't know! I don't know, all right? I just know that I wanted to have sex with you because I loved you. Of course I wanted you to love me, too ... but the kind of love that makes you want to be inside of someone all the time - and not because you want to have a great orgasm, but because you love them so fucking much you want to become one with them, because you want to be a part of them, because you want to do everything in the world to show them exactly how much you love them."

"There are other ways to do that besides sex," Spencer replied gently.

"I know that. But I also know ... I know that ... I know that I'm good at sex," Emily acknowledged uncomfortably. "I don't know if I'm good ... at the rest of it."

"Well, here's what we're going to do," Spencer declared with finality. "We're going to pretend that the phone malfunctioned somehow. Unless the BAU finds a way to deliver us a phone with an encrypted connection, we'll just stay here until the team arrives. I'll remind Hotch that everyone on this team is at risk and that having you here may be an asset, that it may be the only way to find Mandy. But until we go back to Quantico? We won't have sex again. Any kind of sex. Because if that's what our relationship is built on, then I don't want it. I want what's up there" - briefly touching his fingertips to her head - "and what's in there" - moving them over her heart - "more than I want what's down there" - pointing to the area between her barely-covered thighs.

Emily was silent for a moment as she considered his proposal. "But ... but what if we're here for a long time?"

"Then I guess you'll have a long time to work on being good at the rest of it," he laughed, hugging her to him tightly.

"I'll also have a long time to work on developing a yeast infection from having to wear tampons instead of walking around with soaking wet panties all the time," she complained morosely, a disappointed pout on her lips.

Spencer couldn't help himself from leaning in to kiss her. When she drew back, surprised, he brushed her hair away from her face and said, "I told you we shouldn't have sex, Emily. Kissing isn't sex. Besides, when the rest of the team gets here, I'll probably be sharing this bed with Morgan ... so I'd like to kiss my girlfriend while I still have the chance to do it. I mean, if that's OK with you."

"Your ... your girlfriend?" she asked, visibly delighted.

"Well, only if _that's_ OK with you."

"Oh, Spencer," Emily crooned, stroking his smooth cheek with the palm of her hand. "That's more than OK with me."

She kissed him, their recent argument heightening the passionate intensity of their insatiable mouths, their burning acrobatic tongues. After a few minutes of making out like teenagers in the back row of a movie theater, Emily placed her hand on Spencer's thigh and murmured, "I'm hungry."

Despite the stirring in his briefs, he removed her hand from his leg and breathed out her name as a warning.

"Not like that!" she exclaimed, swatting at him playfully. "I'm hungry for food. I haven't had anything to eat for about two days."

"We can't order anything and we can't go out anywhere," he reminded her with a helpless shrug. "We can't take that risk. I already ate most of the sweet stuff out of the gift basket, but there are still some chocolate-covered pretzels ... and there's edible underwear. Strawberry, I think."

Moments later, chewing on the saccharine pink underwear, Emily felt her stomach churning. "I can't ... I feel ..." She put her head between her legs, taking deep breaths to fend off the nausea.

"You're still having some withdrawal symptoms, aren't you?" Spencer asked sympathetically, rubbing his hand across her back.

She didn't respond, afraid that if she opened her mouth, she'd start vomiting up the pretzels and the few bites of that horrific strawberry-flavored concoction she'd just swallowed.

"When it passes, I want you to lift your head very slowly and lay back on the bed. I'm going to get changed and bring you some pajamas to sleep in. You'll feel a lot better tomorrow. I promise."

"You're too good to me," Emily uttered through gritted teeth, fighting yet another wave of nausea as she spoke.

"No, baby. You're wrong," he called over his shoulder, standing up to retrieve their belongings from their go bags. "You're not good enough to yourself."

After the spell had passed and they'd both changed into fresh clothes, Emily laid in Spencer's arms, lulled by the slow rise and fall of her head against his chest with each deep breath he took in and let out, comforted by the steady sound of his heartbeat against her ear.

She had to force herself to keep her eyelids open, to prevent herself from succumbing to the deep slumber her body so badly craved, waiting until she was certain that Spencer had fallen asleep to mumble the words she was too insecure to say to him directly. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

"I want to have your genius babies," she whispered, "and I don't want to keep saving others' lives at the expense of creating our own."

The shadow of night obscured her private smile as she thought of leaving the BAU to pursue a real, full life with Spencer. A life without unsubs and falsified identities and assassination attempts. A life where she'd cook and clean (or, more realistically, where she'd hire someone to cook and clean), where they'd take regular trips to Las Vegas to visit their Grandma Diana, who could advise Emily on all the literary classics she should be reading aloud to her kids, where they'd hire a babysitter one night every month to attend regularly-scheduled "BAU alumni" gatherings at Rossi's huge house so she never lost the family she'd grown to cherish so much over the past six and a half years, so she and Spencer could reminisce about the good old days while consuming huge Italian dinners and drinking too much wine and fucking in the backseat of her BMW until they were sober enough to drive home.

The kind of life Emily always claimed she'd never wanted for herself. The kind of life she honestly hadn't ever wanted for herself. Not until recently, at least.

Because it wasn't just her own life she was thinking about anymore: it was theirs.

Spencer consciously kept his breath stable and measured, focusing on regulating his heartbeat while making a concerted effort to suppress the sheer joy surging from deep within his soul upon hearing her verbalize the impossible fantasy he'd kept locked up tight in a secure corner of his limbic system, the fantasy he remained persistently afraid to entertain because it had always seemed so unreasonable, so selfish to even want Emily to leave behind the chaotic and all-encompassing life of a BAU profiler, to _want _her to leave behind the life she so clearly loved. He certainly never would have asked her to do it, especially not for him. Not for them.

So with the vivid images of their potential future together flowing through his mind and the comforting feeling of Emily's rigid body relaxing against him, Spencer's chronic insomnia finally began to subside.

They both fell asleep smiling.


	17. Returned

It was the sound of the key card sliding in and out of the hotel room door that awakened them: their panicked, terrified eyes meeting for a moment before they frantically began to disentangle themselves from the fierce embrace they'd remained locked in throughout the entirety of their long, peaceful night together.

"Bonjour, honeymooners! Hope you're not doing anything too naughty for my voyeuristic pursuits!" was the shout they heard from the hallway immediately as the door clicked open.

Emily and Spencer exchanged a mutual look of relief, their hurried attempts to move as far away from one another as possible abruptly suspended when they realized it was Garcia. It was only Garcia.

"Now I tried and tried and tried to connect to the phone line and either something's wrong with the phone itself or ..." She rushed into the bedroom with her head down, immersed in her stream-of-consciousness ramble, until she noticed the two pairs of eyes staring at her in amusement as they maintained their snuggled embrace underneath the covers.

"Or someone unplugged it so they could fuck like bunnies!" she exclaimed, awestruck, eyes widening underneath her bright pink glasses as they flicked back and forth between the disconnected cord and the two agents cuddling with guilty smirks on their faces.

After surveying the room and registering the incomplete contents of her gift basket, the semen-stained Georgetown shirt on the floor, and the gobs of come haphazardly smeared across the mirror behind her, Garcia squealed, "I knew it would work!" and then proceeded to belt out, "Like a virgin, touched for the very first time ... Like a viiiiii-rrrrgin ...""Stop it, Garcia," Spencer whined, deeply humiliated and slightly paranoid. "What if the rest of the team hears you?"

"Oh, they're at another hotel." Garcia waved her hand dismissively. "Since I do not share your lax attitudes about Internet privacy and take pride in remaining a google-proof ghost, my name doesn't even appear on the FBI website. So if anyone happens to be watching the hotel, they're just going to think I'm another Americano, fresh off the boat and looking to have a little fun in gay Paris."

"No one is google-proof," Emily insisted. "Even if you're not listed as a government employee, there's still Facebook and ..."

Garcia's smile faded and she snorted derisively, "Facebook! Hah! In Mark Zuckerburg's wet _dreams_. Nope, babydoll. You can google me six ways to Sunday and you won't come close to finding me online. I'm a walking IP address of many aliases."

"But enough about that," she asserted excitedly, flinging herself down onto the bed and forcing Spencer and Emily to draw their legs up to their knees to make room for her. "I want details."

Spencer's apprehensive eyes met Emily's dark gleaming ones. He wasn't sure what kind of details she meant, but his face suddenly felt like it was burning.

"We're in love, Penelope," Emily confided, her giggly half-whisper uncharacteristically resembling that of an adolescent girl confessing to a long-held crush at a slumber party. "But you have to promise you won't tell anyone. And I mean _anyone_. You know, it's different for you and Kevin. You don't work in the same department and you're not out in the field. Hotch would never let me work a case with Spencer again if he thought our judgment could be compromised by our feelings for each other."

"But ... won't your judgment be compromised by your feelings for each other? I mean, hasn't it kinda been compromised by your feelings for each other already?" Garcia probed gently. "You know, the whole 'Emily nearly died from a heroin overdose but I'm not going to tell anyone' thing?"

"I didn't nearly die," Emily scowled, pulling the sheets over her arms when she noticed Garcia sadly surveying the bruised needle marks lining the crook of each elbow.

"You would have died if I hadn't shoved coke up your nose," Spencer reminded her crossly.

Garcia put her hand up. "OK. OK. Wait a minute here. Cocaine? Edible panties? _The Bodyguard? _Who are you and what have you done with my Dr. Reid?"

Emily barked out a laugh, kissing Spencer's shoulder after he turned to glare at her.

"How do you know about _The Bodyguard?" _he asked defensively.

"Um, OK, sweetcheeks. Out of everything I just listed, you're more concerned about me remotely accessing your iTunes download history than you are about the image I have in my mind of you snorting blow off of Emily's stomach and then eating halfway through that pink underwear on the dining table?" Garcia responded incredulously.

"Let me explain," Emily interrupted. "The cocaine was in my handbag. Spencer didn't do any of it; it was left over from the night before. He just ... administered it to counteract the heroin. And as far as the edible panties? I was so hungry last night I had to resort to taking a few bites of it but it was so ... Bleccch. I nearly threw up." She shuddered with disgust at the memory. "Besides," she added, a wicked gleam in her dark eyes, "Spencer doesn't need some fake strawberry flavoring to go down on me. He likes the way I taste juuuuust fine. Don't you, baby?"

Spencer's face turned a deep shade of crimson. "I cannot believe you just said that."

"What?" Emily shrugged casually. "It's true, isn't it?"

"You don't have to say it. Out loud. To other people," he stammered, running his nervous fingers through his hair.

"Oh, please," Emily chided him. "Garcia won't tell anyone how you ... what was it you said? ... how you want to bottle up my vaginal fluid so you can smell it and taste it all the time?"

"Emily," he admonished. "Stop it."

"You love it," she teased seductively, leaning in to kiss him while subtly moving her hand underneath the sheets to reach beneath Spencer's briefs, gripping his growing hard-on in her hand and lightly stroking it up and down with enough discretion that Garcia remained oblivious to her slow out-of-sight movements and Spencer remained far too embarrassed to implore her to stop.

"So what's going on? Are they still sending me back to Quantico?" Emily inquired conversationally, squeezing Spencer's cock several times, pursing her mouth in satisfaction as she watched him bite down hard on his bottom lip and felt the stream of pre-come dripping across the back of her hand.

"Nah, they're going to keep you here. They're planning on sending you undercover. The press release we issued was about conducting an internal investigation into possible drug-smuggling by federal agents that could be related to a string of homicides in the Northeast."

Emily blinked in dismay. "You mean ... you mean, the higher-ups know about my drug use?"

"Oh, no no no no no," Garcia rushed to reassure her. "Strauss doesn't even know. Of course, we had to fight off the DEA and Homeland Security pitbulls just jumping to overtake this 'internal investigation', but we managed to keep it a BAU case because the surviving daughters of the MCAT murders were drugged first, which is why they slept through the whole thing. And even though it's uber-clear that the little shithead we have in custody back in Westchester isn't nearly sophisticated enough to be involved in some kind of global drug-smuggling ring, it was the only way to obtain authorization so we could come here and find Amanda. Because when she sees the press release, she'll think that you've gone rogue and that we're here to investigate _you _instead of her. After all, she doesn't know you didn't come here alone, and even in that fried little brain of hers, she can't possibly believe that the FBI would knowingly send a field agent into a ... um, a ... _situation _... like you were in last night, not without any backup. She's going to start feeling really freaking bad about trying to have you killed."

"But you said I'll still have to go undercover," Emily began cautiously, trying to suppress the fear rising in her chest, accidentally gripping Spencer underneath the covers with such force that he jumped, startled, throbbing painfully against her palm. Emily kept her eyes trained on Garcia as she gently traced her fingertips up and down his length in a gesture of apology. "So what exactly does that mean? What will I have to do?"

"You'll have to become Leigh again, obvs," Garcia answered, surprised at the question. "How else do you think we're going to find Mandy?"

"Right," Emily asserted through gritted teeth, envisioning herself walking through Mandy's favorite party spots in search of the dealer who tried to kill her and the blonde-haired unsub she'd once cherished as a friend, with various powders and pills just being ... handed to her. This was really going to suck.

"It'll be OK," Spencer murmured, nuzzling his face into her neck. "You won't be alone this time. We'll be there. I'll be there - and I won't let anything happen to you."

"Awwww, how cute are you two!" Garcia swooned, placing her hands over her heart. "Now let's move onto happier things, shall we? So dish, Prentiss, you sex goddess, you. Have you managed to school our resident genius in your wanton ways yet? Oh, and speaking of 'wanton ways'," she muttered distractedly, raising an eyebrow, "I can't thank you enough for giving Kevin your step-by-step guide in ... ahem ... oratory skills, if you know what I mean. My god, Prentiss ... I mean, you know I'm straight, but if you could teach Kevin all of _that _with just one page of scribbled notes? Well, I bet you could make my pretty pussy kitty absolutely howl!"

"Garcia!" Emily sputtered, sneaking a glance at Spencer. "Could you not?"

"Oh, shit!" Garcia's hands flew to her mouth. "He doesn't know?"

"No, he knows," she replied, frowning. "It's just not ... something I want to advertise."

"Wait, you told her about Laleh, too?" Spencer interjected, hurt. Emily said she'd never revealed that story to anyone else before.

"Who's Laleh?" Garcia wondered aloud, confused.

"No one." My god, how it broke her heart to refer to Laleh as 'no one'. "She's just some girl I dated before Spencer." Emily cleared her throat and forced a smile. "And Garcia? No 'schooling' was necessary. Turns out that Spencer's a natural. Even taught me a few things."

"No way!" Garcia shrieked. "Talent in _both _heads ... if you know ..."

"We know what you mean," they interrupted in unison.

Emily made sure to show just how much she appreciated the head she was presently grasping in her palm, rubbing it slowly and leisurely while Spencer shifted uncomfortably beside her.

"I've gotta get back to the team. And ... you both need to charge your phones," she ordered, taking two European converters out of her massive purse and dropping them on the bed. "It's safe for you to order room service, but do not leave the hotel until we've confirmed Mandy's location and set up the sting. They're pretty close so I'd say you have maybe an hour? Enjoy it while you can, you wild things!"

And with that, Garcia stood up to leave, her absence filling the room more strongly than her presence.

"What are you doing?" Spencer groaned when he heard the door click shut, unable to stop his hips from rising off the bed as Emily began to fuck him with her enclosed fist. "We said no sex."

"No, _you _said no sex," Emily purred mischievously. "Besides, what if I run into Picasso and the only way to prove I'm not part of an FBI investigation is to do drugs with him? What if I die without ever having given you a blowjob?"

Spencer froze. "That's not funny, Emily."

"It wasn't supposed to be," she said quietly, searching his face with her dilated, scared pupils. "They're sending me in alone, Spencer. Can you please just wait for me to brush my teeth so I can keep your taste in the back of my throat and maybe - just maybe - it'll be enough to stop me from wanting to replace that with the taste of coke or dope or crushed-up pills? Please?"

When he didn't respond, Emily pushed the covers away and eased his pajamas and his briefs down to his thighs so she could suck him hard, poking her tongue into the tip where a steady stream of pre-come was drizzling out of him. He gave a series of appreciative sighs, which she took as a signal to rush into the bathroom and quickly brush her teeth before sliding back onto the bed, positioning herself between his legs and pulling off his pajama pants and his underwear.

There was no slow build-up, no foreplay. Emily sucked him expertly, deep-throating him while making circular movements with her tongue that left him whimpering and writhing underneath her, ready to explode within mere minutes.

When she abruptly and unexpectedly stopped, Spencer sat up, asking eagerly, "So you want to ... ?"

"No, no," Emily replied. "Lay back down. I want to ... try something." Before he had a chance to inquire further, she reached into her pajama pants with her left hand and pulled it back out, leaning forward to coat his lips with the fluid glistening on her two fingers. Just as Spencer's tongue darted out to taste her, she dipped her fingers into herself again, deeper this time, covering them completely. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, waiting in anticipation. And then he felt it. He felt it and he nearly jumped off the bed.

He felt her fingers pressing against his ass.

"What are you doing?" he cried out, alarmed.

"Shhhh," she murmured, kissing his cock slowly and tenderly. "Trust me."

"I do trust you, but ... oh, Jesus!" Spencer moaned when he felt her fingers inside of him. She pushed deeper. And then a little deeper. And then ... "Ohmygodholyfuuuuuck," he groaned, feeling that familiar build-up starting to rise within him.

"A prostate massage," she whispered.

"Please ..." he begged desperately. "Emily, please ..."

"Please _what?" _she taunted innocently, drawing her fingers back slightly to relieve the pressure.

Spencer knew exactly what she wanted him to say. And even though he cringed inwardly, he said it. Even though he could barely form a coherent thought, he said it. "Please - please suck my cock."

"OK, Spencer," she agreed, a wicked smile on her face. "I'll suck your huge, thick, hard cock while I fuck your tight asshole with my finger. Is that what you want me to do, Spencer? Are you sure that's what you want me to do?"

"Y-yes! God, please, yes!" he begged, trying to hold still so he wouldn't erupt all over himself.

With her wide-open eyes locked against his half-closed ones, Emily took him in her mouth and continued sucking rhythmically and forcefully, matching the rapid strokes of her right hand wrapped around him with the pulsations of her two fingers inside of him.

Spencer discovered, for the first time, what it felt like to be _fucked_. And, to his surprise, he discovered that he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

It took less than thirty seconds before he was jerking his hips up and down, grabbing the bedsheets with both fists and moaning, "I'm gonna come ... oh god oh my god I'm gonna come so fucking hard oh Jesus Christ I'm -"

A string of expletives escaped his throat before the most incredible full-body orgasm overtook him completely and his capacity for speech was abolished, all communication reduced to a series of incomprehensible grunts and wails.

Emily kept swallowing and swallowing, never breaking her stride even as she used the thumb of her right hand to apply pressure to the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock. She never took her eyes off of him, not for a moment, relishing his reaction. Relishing the fact that she was the one responsible for his reaction.

Spencer came so hard he blacked out. The endless stream of come gushing out of him was like a high-pressure water hose turned on at full blast and he convulsed deeply and powerfully along with the a-fucking-mazing feeling of emptying his balls in one long unstoppable spray of fluid. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. It was like having orgasms within orgasms within orgasms.

When his ears stopped ringing and the bright dots of light clouding his vision receded, he stared in awe down at Emily, who was still sucking him hungrily. He had stopped ejaculating and was about to tell her to stop when she switched tactics: just held him in her mouth while stimulating his prostate with her left hand and gently squeezing his cock with her right, syncing the timing of her pulsations against that prominent vein with her pulsations against the sensitive area inside of him ... until he felt the erratic series of spurts exploding from inside of him, through him, and out of him.

And then, without warning, there was another massive wave fast approaching. Spencer clenched his whole body, tightening around her fingers and yelling out, "motherballs!" as a final long stream of come poured out of him, leaving him light-headed and dizzy, his legs twitching uncontrollably. He couldn't speak, couldn't tell her to stop, although he was afraid that the overwhelming sensations could quickly turn painful if she didn't.

But he didn't have to tell her to stop. Emily ... well, Emily just _knew_. She took her mouth and her hand off of him and gently probed him one last time, eliciting several clear thin strands of liquid that dribbled out of him before she withdrew her fingers carefully and sat back on the bed, waiting for him to say something.

Spencer tried to breathe normally again, gasping out, "I haven't felt anything like that since the first time I ... since the first time I masturbated. I ... I must have looked like ..."

"You looked beautiful," Emily reassured him, her eyes shining. "I couldn't even swallow it all, there was so much." She gestured toward the front of her pajamas, where a massive wet spot had formed when his ejaculate had leaked out of her mouth and down onto her T-shirt. "But ..." She paused, unable to suppress a giggle. "... 'motherballs'? Really? Where did _that _come from?"

"I don't know," he laughed, his body still tingling, electrified.

"How do you feel?" Emily asked in a hushed whisper, reaching for his hands his hands, the hands still clenching the bedsheets, and kissing each of his fingers, one by one.

"I feel ..." He paused, trying to find a word to describe it. "I feel ... high."

"So I guess I'm _your _OxyContin now, huh?" she half-whispered, lowering her long lashes seductively.

"Any more of you and I might overdose," Spencer whispered back, sitting up on his trembling knees to kiss her. She kissed him back fiercely, with passion, her hot tongue filling his mouth, twisting and turning and dancing around his. He reached down to press his palm against the crotch of her pajama pants and could feel the dampness there, even through the layers of clothing. "You're so wet," he murmured in her ear, sucking on her earlobe as she unconsciously started to rock back and forth, grinding herself against his palm. When he reached underneath the waistband of her pajama pants, though, she stopped him.

"Wait," she protested weakly, clearly conflicted. "I- I'm going to wash my hands and then I want you to watch me. I want you to watch me while I touch myself."

Even though he was so spent it would have required a forklift to raise his limp cock again, an erotic thrill still sailed through his body upon hearing those words, causing him to shiver in delight.

After Emily washed her hands, she disrobed and, laying on top of the covers, shyly averted her eyes. "I feel really ... really exposed, doing this," she confessed. "When I was a teenager, Matthew and I used to masturbate together but he was always touching himself, too. And I was kind of putting on a show for him. I've never done this in front of someone like I _really _do it when I'm alone."

"What makes it different?" Spencer asked, confused. "It's not like I've never seen you touch yourself before. You did it when we were having sex."

"Because ... because this is me. Just being me," she struggled to explain.

"Well, I happen to love you just being you," he said simply, leaning over to kiss her.

Emily grabbed the back of his head and kept kissing him, lost in the connection forged by their voracious mouths and tongues. They kissed and kissed and kissed until she was clenching her thighs together in excitement, her pussy slick with wet heat. "OK," she announced, pulling away. "I'm ... I'm ready."

Spencer was surprised by how different their masturbation habits were: while he spent a long time fantasizing and teasing himself until he was ready to come, Emily didn't touch her nipples or run her fingers along her thighs and stomach like he did. She didn't start at a slow pace before gradually increasing her tempo like he did, either.

No, the second their lips parted and he leaned back to watch, Emily placed her finger on her clit and began rubbing it furiously in small circles, like she was being timed in some kind of race to her climax.

"What do you usually think about? When you do it alone, I mean?" Spencer wanted to know.

"Your face," she gasped out. "Between my legs. Looking up at me with those ... oh, god ... those eyes ... while you lick me ... and suck me ... I close my eyes ... I pretend it's your tongue ... and when I see your eyes ... see how badly you want to be inside of me ... how badly you _want _me ... oh god I need you to want me ..."

"I want you," he rushed to assure her, trailing his fingertips along her frantically-rotating shoulder. "I wish it was my tongue instead of your finger. I wish my face was buried between your legs. Whenever I think about tasting you there, I get so hard, Emily ... You have no idea ... Like on the plane? Remember?"

"Mmm-hmm?" she half-moaned, her finger rubbing faster, harder, galloping against her clit.

"If I hadn't practiced controlling myself for so many years, I would have come, Emily. I almost did. I waited and waited and waited until I thought you were asleep ... Do you remember? How fast I came after? How I did it again and then again?"

"Yes," she groaned, closing her eyes.

"No, no, don't close your eyes," Spencer implored. "Look at me. Look into my eyes."

She did. And she saw all the things she always fantasized about; she saw lust and excitement and desire - but most of all? She saw love.

When she came, she saw love.

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Hours later, standing self-consciously in front of her fellow BAU teammates, Emily didn't see even the smallest trace of love emanating back into her guilty, vulnerable eyes.

And although she was wearing a black long-sleeved Gucci shirt and matching skirt, tastefully chosen by JJ to obscure the visible tracks on her arms, she still felt more exposed, more on display, than she had when she'd opened her eyes on the plane to find Spencer staring at her nearly-naked body or when she'd bent down over the table, prone and waiting for him to fuck her from behind.

Oh, Spencer.

Spencer, who was standing right next to her and yet who felt further away than when she'd been separated from him for six months by the endlessness of the Atlantic Ocean. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched his fingers twitching against the side of his light brown pants like some Morse Code reminder to himself that he couldn't do anything to protect her from their hostile and mistrustful glares, not now, not after he'd proven incapable of saving her from herself.

"We're giving you a cell phone that doubles as a recording device. You can keep it in your purse; it's been wired to four different audio devices that were placed in the surrounding apartments and is designed to filter out loud music and background noise. Make sure the purse is with you at all times," Hotch instructed, his face and tone conveying all the disapproval he didn't have time to put into words.

"We're also giving you two tablets containing MDMA," Morgan said reluctantly, his gaze fixed on the floor, clearly unhappy with this decision. "If Mandy wants you to prove you're not an agent, show her these."

"... and if that's not enough?" Emily asked softly, imploring him silently to just look at her, just please look at her.

When he finally did, it was with a nonchalant shrug and an indifferent mask pasted on his face. "Better you take these than anything else she might offer you." There was no empathy in his voice: just the cold, hard truth.

"What do I say to her?" Emily wanted to know after a long silence had passed. "What's my story?"

"Listen, Amanda's already been at this party for forty-five minutes. We really need to get you in there now," Hotch stated urgently. "And as for your story? Well, Agent Prentiss, you've proven to me and to the rest of this team that you're more than capable of making up stories. I'm sure you'll think of something."

So there she was. In the same apartment she'd visited with Mandy after their initial fateful meeting at the art gallery. She felt more anxious, more out-of-place than she had that very first time.

Emily immediately recognized a few familiar faces collected around a table covered in white lines; when they saw her, they greeted her warmly before leaning down to inhale the powdered residue in front of them.

And then she finally noticed her. Mandy. Standing off to the side with her arms folded across her skinny waist and her long blonde hair hanging down over her shoulders. Just ... staring at her.

_Be Leigh, _Emily reminded herself desperately. _Be Leigh._

"Mandy!" she shrieked happily, trotting forward to give her a hug.

It wasn't returned. Mandy stood as still and as solid as the Arc de Triomphe against Emily's warm embrace.

"I've been looking for you everywhere! I have so many things I need to tell you," Emily gushed, pulling away and flipping her black hair casually, a huge grin pasted on her face.

When Mandy smiled back, flashing her dazzling white teeth, she didn't look at all like a person thrilled to be reunited with her long lost friend. She looked more like a shark preparing to consume its prey.

"I guess you do," Mandy mused sarcastically, her piercing blue eyes cold and unblinking. "I guess you do ... _Emily fucking Prentiss."_

And twelve hours later, still high on MDMA and alone in the BAU headquarters, that's exactly how she would sign her letter of resignation.

Emily fucking Prentiss.


	18. Unfinished, Part I

The moment Emily heard Mandy utter her name - her real name - she was gripped by fear. Just like "Leigh" would have been during those six months undercover.

Fortunately, it subsided shortly once she remembered that Mandy already knew her real name and her connection to the FBI - and once she realized that while Mandy had repeatedly refreshed her "memorial page" until it was abruptly removed from the government website, she probably hadn't seen the recent press release requesting the public's assistance in finding Agent Emily Prentiss so she could be brought in for questioning as a suspect in a drug trafficking case.

After all, Mandy's enthusiasm for drugs and art certainly did not extend to news journalism. Even the raucous cheers following the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death had only distracted her for about two minutes before she resumed playing an intensive game of Angry Birds.

With that in mind, Emily whispered harshly, in a voice tinged with paranoia, "Shush! Are there any Feds here? Any cops?"

"You tell me," Mandy retorted icily, straightening her shoulders and clenching her fists against her hipbones.

Emily surveyed the room and murmured in a low voice, "None that I see, but they'd know better than to send anyone I'd recognize if they were planning on busting me."

_"Busting _you?" Mandy repeated in disbelief. "Busting you for what?"

"Haven't you heard? The FBI is looking for me," Emily hissed, swiveling her body as though checking to make sure no one was in earshot.

"You _are _the fucking FBI," Mandy snapped violently, the rageful expression on her face prompting Emily to take several instinctive steps backward. This was a side of her friend she'd never, ever seen before and - judging by how quickly it was blinked away and replaced with an impressively-deceptive blank stare - it was one that Mandy must have become accustomed to suppressing for a long, long time.

"Oh, good. You already know." Emily feigned relief. "I really, really didn't want to be the one to have to tell you. So it's on the news here, too?"

"Some of it," Mandy replied evasively, pursing her lips.

"Well, before you believe what they're saying about me, here's the full story: I came here for six months because I was in hiding ... not from an abusive ex but from an unsub - that's FBI lingo for 'unknown subject' - who was trying to kill me. The government faked my death: they even held a funeral for me and gave me a memorial website. Only two members of my team knew I was still alive ... until they tracked the unsub down and killed him. After that, it was safe for me to return to the States and resume my position in the Behavioral Analysis Unit ..." Emily quickly realized that she'd lapsed into Agent Prentiss-speak and adjusted her tone accordingly. "... and it was so ... Ugh. You have no idea. All this really heavy serial killer shit, all day long. I mean, I wanted to fucking _live _again, and as hard as it was to leave my family the first time -"

"Your family?" Mandy laughed harshly.

"Yeah," Emily said, suddenly overcome by a deep, melancholy sadness as she remembered that last day, that last conversation with Reid, that last glance around the office where she'd grown to feel more at home than she ever did in her own apartment. "Listen, unlike you, I never had a real family. Unlike you, I never had a dad who loved me. So my team members kinda became my family. They would have died to protect me ... and that's why I pretended to die. I pretended to die to protect them."

"So after this stalker guy was killed, you went back to DC for a couple of months and just ... what? Left your job, left your _family _all over again so you could come back here to party?" Mandy questioned skeptically.

"It's not that simple," Emily insisted, mentally reviewing her 'story' one last time. "Around the same time I met you, I was at a discothèque and started talking to this guy from New York City. A few drinks and a blowjob later, he's spilling about how he sells to, like, all of the small-time dealers in this rich upstate area nearby and starts complaining about some catastrophic meth and heroin shortage destroying his business. I mean, these rich brats aren't about to slum it to New Jersey to buy drugs, you know?"

"Uh huh," Mandy agreed apprehensively.

"So I offered to help him out with the supplies if he'd help me out with the compensation 'cause there was no way I could keep paying for all the clothes and the shoes and the drugs on my shitty government allowance. Mandy, you really need to know why I never told you about this. I never told you because I don't mix business with pleasure and I ... I don't put the people I care about in danger."

Emily paused, allowing that last sentence to sink in. "When I first got here, I totally felt like my life was over and you became like ... like a foster parent or something. It didn't take long for me to realize that you were a better friend to me than anyone at the FBI had ever been because I could be _real _with you. So I made sure to protect you just like I protected them."

"Abandonment isn't exactly protection," Mandy added snidely, the comment momentarily inundating Emily with guilt ... not about what she'd done to Mandy, but about what she'd done to Spencer ...

_No, Emily. No. Don't go there. Not here, not now. Leave Spencer out of this._

"I deserved that," Emily agreed ruefully, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. "The reason I left DC is because my boss called us in for a briefing about a series of homicides in a suburb of Manhattan, a case we'd overtaken from the DEA and Homeland Security. When I heard that, I knew it must involve international drug trafficking and I decided it would be better to split than to risk the possibility that this case was somehow related to the ... the, uh, business I was doing here ... but now I'm wanted as a fucking accessory to murder 'cause apparently my overseas connection was supplying almost exclusively to this kid they suspect of killing a bunch of people in New York. And my fucking 'team' - my fucking _family _- went to the media like they really think I could be guilty of this!" Emily's tone had escalated into hysteria. "What the fuck kind of a family does that?"

Mandy froze. "Wh- what was the case about?"

"I don't know! I was so freaked out that I chartered a private jet back here instead of going into the office for the briefing! And now I don't know who to trust since my former team is treating me like some fugitive criminal ... and when I went to Picasso's to look for you, he shot me up with speedballs and I'm pretty sure I OD'ed in his apartment even though I woke up in the hallway of my hotel. And that's when I started wondering, _Is he part of it? Is he working for the Feds? Was this a hit gone wrong? _I mean, Jesus, if I hadn't started snorting some quality Oxy back in DC, I'd probably be dead right now!"

Mandy surveyed her intently, registering the panic and confusion and - for the first time ever - the mistrust in Emily's eyes.

"I didn't know anything about it," Mandy stated bluntly, but the lie was given away by one of her 'tells': her eyes shifted down toward the floor until her composure had been regained and then she looked up, almost challenging Emily with her gaze.

"I'd ... I'd really like to hear that from Picasso," Emily offered, hoping that her cover story had been believable enough for Mandy to convince him to come over and put an end to this charade. While Hotch had made it clear that the FBI's primary target was Mandy, he'd also sternly reminded her that they couldn't just permit a potential accessory to flee - and that they'd only storm the apartment if both targets were present or if Emily proved incapable of luring Picasso to the apartment.

Mandy narrowed her eyes. "How do I know _you're _not lying? How do I know you're not trying to set me up? How do I know you weren't so desperate to convince your fucked-up idea of a family that you really, really, really were the good little girl they always thought you were and that you'd just been coerced into doing a shitload of illegal drugs by a girl who no one, not one person, ever saw as good?"

"Mandy, what are you talking about?" Emily put a hand on her blonde friend's shoulder. "I think you're good. I think you're amazing! I don't know when this self-hatred shit started, but my god, you were so good to me ... Don't you remember how you took care of me when I freaked out or had a bad comedown? I didn't have a chance to tell you this before, but I thought - I _think _- you would've made a great doctor. And besides ..." Emily reached into her purse and pulled out the baggie containing the two tablets of Ecstasy. "... do you really think an active FBI agent would walk around with these?"

"Could be Tylenol, for all I know," Mandy remarked cynically. "Could be cyanide."

"Nope, pure Molly," Emily faked a brag. Sort of. "You want one?"

Mandy paused, considering her options. "No. I want you to dump everything out of your bag, crush one up, and sniff it. And then we'll talk about getting Picasso over here."

After the tablet of Ecstasy had been crushed and laid out in thick, brownish-pink lines next to her cell phone, wallet, and FBI ID - which Mandy had quickly snatched up to examine closely - Emily couldn't help but feel that familiar anticipatory thrill surge through her before she lowered her face to the powdered MDMA and sniffed it, quick and hard, tasting the chemical tinge in the back of her throat. "There," she announced. "Happy now?"

"We'll see in about fifteen minutes," Mandy responded skeptically, moving to the other side of the crowded room where Emily watched as she dialed a number and started talking on her cell phone, gesticulating wildly but managing to keep her voice out of earshot.

"I'm sorry, Spencer," Emily whispered into the bugged device on the table in front of her. "I'm so, so sorry."

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In the white van parked across the street from the apartment complex, three heads spun around to gape at Reid.

Spencer's hazel eyes settled on Morgan's. His were the most unsettling. There was no teasing glint, no "is she sorry she's not in ecstasy with you, pretty boy?" smirk plastered on his face. There was just ... clouded confusion, followed by an apparent realization that caused his jaw to drop, dangling wordlessly as he furrowed his brow in concentration, his head cocked and his eyes trained on Spencer's mouth.

Under his scrutiny, Spencer became increasingly uncomfortable, wriggling in his seat as he tried to profile Morgan's profiling of him. Why the focus on his lips? Did they look too ... kissed? Now that he was officially a man, were his pheromones screaming to the rest of the world, "I'm not a virgin anymore"? Could Morgan smell Emily's scent on the fingers Reid refused to wash? Did he notice Spencer periodically waving them underneath his nostrils and inhaling hungrily?

"You used, didn't you?" Morgan finally spat out, vehemence creeping into his tone. "You fucking used with her."

"No! What? I -" Spencer sputtered, his eyes darting over to Rossi and Hotch, whose faces reflected the same suspicious accusation that Morgan had just uttered aloud.

"Listen, man ... How many times have we shared a hotel room over the years? If I so much as _cough, _you jump up like I just sucker-punched you in the gut. But Prentiss? She stays out partying all night and you remain in some kind of narcoleptic coma while she stumbles into your room, takes a shower, and gets dressed?" Morgan shook his head, his lips tightening into a thin line. "Nah, I don't think so."

"But I -" Spencer tried to interrupt.

"Look, I used to work narcotics, Reid. And I saw the way your mouth twitched when she apologized to you. Not to the rest of us. To you. So I'm thinking that you woke up when she came back into that hotel room and when you saw how high she was, you wanted it. You wanted it bad. Bad enough to make a stupid junkie promise that after you'd both finished off the rest of her stash, neither of you would ever touch another drug again. Bad enough to ..."

By now, Spencer was fuming, his eyes flaring as he thought, _Derek, if I told you what I wanted so badly - what we both wanted so badly - it would blow your puny little mind. _Instead, he just smirked, thinking of all the things his fellow agent didn't know about what really happened in that room and smugly declared, "This is exactly why you'll never be good at poker, Morgan ... because you look, but you don't _see."_

Caught off guard, Morgan stopped abruptly, trying to catch Rossi's glance, but his colleague, a seasoned poker player himself, seemed lost in his own world as he contemplated Reid's cryptic statement. "OK. Let's say you did sleep through all that noise," Morgan agreed gently, trying to lull him into complacency (as Spencer knew from watching him interrogate unsubs over the last seven years) before going in for the kill: "You're telling me you didn't notice she was high? You, with all your experience, didn't even fucking notice she was high?"

"Well, you didn't notice, either, Morgan!" The words flew out of Spencer's mouth before he could stop himself.

_"Excuse _me?" Morgan fired back, raising his eyebrows.

"With all _your _experience, you didn't notice Emily's constricted pupils, her detachment, her emotional lability, or the way she was both sweating and shivering on Sunday at the briefing?" Spencer continued, unable to stop himself. "Or were you too focused on trying to get a night with her alone? Did you miss the dazed look on her face because you were too busy looking at her -"

"Reid," Hotch warned.

Morgan held his hand up in protest. "No, Hotch. It's all good. I get it. I get it now. Pretty boy here's jealous."

"Jealous?" Spencer responded incredulously.

"Yeah, that's right. Jealous. You're jealous of the way I flirt with Prentiss. Jealous because you don't know how to flirt with her like ..."

"Right, Morgan," Spencer interrupted bitterly. "I've always dreamed of sexually harassing the women I work with."

"That's enough, Reid," Hotch warned again, but this time Spencer was on a roll.

"Morgan, I know things about Emily that you will never, ever, ever - not even in your wildest dreams - know about her. Like how her lips always taste like vanilla. Always. Even when she's not wearing lip gloss!" Practically giddy and entirely oblivious to the shocked expressions on the three agents' faces, Spencer couldn't stop the inappropriate confessions pouring out of him in a torrent of excitable, pressured speech. "Or how she acts like she always needs to be in control and yet she gets so, so excited by being teased to the point where she's desperate and begging for release. Or how she tries so hard to keep her eyes open the whole time, and how she looks almost like ... No, how she _does _look like an angel. How she looks like an absolute fucking angel when she comes ..."

"That's _enough, _Reid!" Hotch demanded forcefully, stunning him into silence.

_Oh, my God. What did I just do? _Spencer thought, horrified. _And why did I do it? Was this really about Morgan? Was it about finally shutting him up once and for all by proving I'm not the geeky kid he thinks I am? Or was it jealousy? Admittedly, I didn't exactly love the fact that Emily introduced me as 'Derek' to the bouncer at that club but he's not a threat to our relationship, right? Or did I ... did I selfishly use the words she murmured to me when she thought I was asleep as a way to force one of us off the team so we could have the kind of life she claimed to want for us? The kind of life I already know I want for us?_

Before he could stop to further contemplate any of the numerous questions swirling around in his brain, Spencer heard a voice over the loudspeaker. Spencer heard _her _voice over the loudspeaker.

"Well, if it isn't my very favorite artist in the flesh! C'mere, baby ... You want a line?"

Picasso's courteous "No, merci" was followed by the unmistakable sound of someone snorting drugs right next to the phone. The unmistakable sound of Emily snorting drugs right next to the phone, of her choosing to insufflate the second tablet of Ecstasy for no reason other than to get high. To get higher.

Hotch turned to Rossi and Morgan with a grave expression on his weathered face and ordered, "Let's go."

When Spencer moved to follow, Hotch nearly snarled, "Not you, Reid. You've done quite enough 'work' on this case already."

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The plane ride back to Quantico was like some fucked-up version of a reality television show. Jersey Shore meets Intervention, only without the much-desired shore or the much-needed intervention.

After takeoff, Emily had sauntered down the aisle to the last seat, to Spencer's seat, and squarely planted her feet on the aisle beside him, hand on hip. Eventually, he looked up and met her eyes - or her pupils, rather, which were indistinguishable from her irises and twinkling with pharmaceutical euphoria.

"Is this seat taken?" she asked in a throaty whisper.

"Yeah. By me," Spencer snapped.

"Good," Emily responded with a dazzling smile, either ignoring or simply not registering his tone of voice before sliding down onto his lap and burying her face in his neck, kissing and licking and sucking on his pale skin. Because she was straddling him, she was spared from witnessing the discomfort and dismay written all over their colleagues' faces. Still, Spencer knew that her altered mental status would have prevented her from truly "seeing" what he saw when he glanced over her shoulder.

It struck him as ironic that Ecstasy was colloquially referred to as "the love drug" - because this disconnected, alien-eyed, jaw-clenching woman grinding herself into his lap didn't even begin to resemble the vulnerable, trusting partner he'd held in his arms only hours earlier. No, this person definitely wasn't Emily Prentiss. And this feeling definitely wasn't love.

But so much had happened between the time that the three agents had stormed the apartment to apprehend the suspects and the present moment ... and it wasn't only Emily's MDMA intoxication preventing Spencer from physically responding to her efforts to excite him. It was ... It was everything.

It was hearing the rat-a-tat-tat of gunshots that had rendered Spencer completely incapable of breathing, deprived his knuckles of oxygenated blood flow as his clenched fists whitened and grew numb against his knees. It was the relieved grin, the accelerated heartbeat, the shaking knees, the ebullience surging through his body when her voice boomed joyfully throughout the white van as she welcomed her team like she was greeting them at a dinner party. It was Hotch's stoic voice reporting that both Mandy and Picasso were among the casualties, with the other bullets avoiding all but two civilian spectators and hitting the agents' FBI Kevlar vests, briefly knocking the wind out of them but mercifully sparing their lives.

It was the hope and anxiety he felt while waiting on the tarmac for Emily's arrival. It was watching her gallop toward him like a rare Thoroughbred with her long black hair flying behind her as she sang loudly, "I wanna run to you ..." It was the way she grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him like Whitney Houston kissed Kevin Costner in that heart-wrenching scene from _The Bodyguard. _It was the way he kissed her back.

And now, with Emily running her hands over his chest and gyrating against his lap like a stripper, it was ...

It was over.

Wasn't it?


	19. Unfinished, Part II

"Hi, my name's Emily and ... and I'm an addict."

As the dark-haired federal agent quickly announced "oh, and today I have twenty-one days clean" to the other alcoholics and junkies occupying the surrounding circle of chairs before the next introduction, all of them clapped with encouraging support and praise. In response, Emily's pale lips twisted upward in a manner that - to any trained observer - could easily be identified for what it truly was: a forced, sardonic grimace and not the genuine smile she'd been trying to feign.

Unfortunately for her, they were all trained observers.

Because this wasn't just any rehab. This was a rehab specifically for federal agents: FBI, CIA, ICE/Homeland Security, Interpol, even a few ambassadors and diplomats from the State Department that Emily had instantly recognized from those faraway childhood days spent traveling the globe with her mother. Jesus, less than a month earlier and she would have been here with Strauss, of all people.

When the preamble was finished and a member of the group began to speak about his fears and anxieties about returning to Langley, Emily couldn't prevent herself from wondering (for perhaps the thousandth time since she'd arrived three weeks earlier), _how did it ever come to this?_

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Everything hurt.

Her back hurt, her limbs hurt, her brain hurt ... hell, even the _walls_ hurt.

Wait a minute. The walls.

_What_ are _these walls? Where_ am_ I?_ Emily thought, panic rising in her chest like a flash flood as she struggled ardently to sit up despite the pain, only to discover that she couldn't move.

She couldn't move because her arms and legs were bound in four-point restraints.

And then it all came back to her, the memories permeating her brain like images from a horror film - but, unlike the time she was twelve years old and snuck into a darkened movie theater to see _Poltergeist,_ Emily couldn't close her eyes or plug her fingers in her ears to block out the terrifying visions and noises, not this time, because she was the star, the writer, and the director of the awful scenes playing over and over again in her mind, sending involuntary shivers through her very core.

Scenes like a series of snapshots viewed from afar.

_Click._ A blurry, unfocused image of Morgan's strong, muscular black arms pulling her off of Spencer's lap, masterfully grabbing her wrists and spinning her toward the back of the plane. _Click._ His insistent hands gently pushing her down into a seated position and urgently shoving the headphones from his iPod into her ears, the blasting electronica temporarily distracting her from the pressing, overwhelming need to be as close to the man she loved as humanly possible, the man whose face was just one - _click_ - among five with their faces fixed upon her, faces twisting and contorting into gaping masks of disdain ... No, wait. Make that four faces. Because ... _Click._ Because, unlike the others, Spencer's face reflected something far more complex, something almost resembling guilt ...

But Emily, still flying high on the Ecstasy she'd snorted several hours earlier, had neither the emotional capacity nor the presence of mind to focus on her team members, not then, not with her body automatically swaying to the music and her head bopping up and down as the beats surged and pulsed through her. _Click. Click. Click click click click click._

And then the photographic stills turned crystal clear, like switching from a disposable underwater camera to a high-definition Nikon, characterizing the series of images that she already knew would remain branded on her hippocampus forever.

_Click._ Sprinting toward Spencer on the tarmac at Quantico. _Click._ His smooth, soft hands raised defensively in a gesture of self-protection, preventing Emily from wrapping him in the tight embrace she so desperately craved. Preventing her from touching him at all. _Click._ The infinite sadness in his flecked hazel eyes as he mouthed - no, as he choked out - "Stay away from me!"

_Click._

"It's over, Emily." _Click._ "It's over."

It's over, it's over, it's over, and there's no rewind button, no erase button; the camera is empty, lost, finished, just like them.

Just like her.

A resignation letter with far too many typos to bother correcting. A shaky drive into the Washington, DC projects where she was ripped off - not once, but twice - before managing to score a bundle of heroin. A long look into the mirror, her distorted reflection swimming into focus as the last of the Ecstasy floated away from her like balloons in the wind, leaving her standing, statuesque, staring at a lonely, silent figure occupying a lonely, silent apartment, damned to a lonely, silent future.

Spencer was wrong.

It wasn't over. Not yet, anyway.

It wouldn't be over until she'd finished snorting those lines and lines and lines of brown powder through a rolled-up twenty dollar bill and sending one final text message before surrendering to the infinite black nothingness quickly creeping up on her.

To: Spencer Reid  
>Message: "i hope life treats you kind &amp; i hope you have all you dream of &amp; i wish you joy &amp; happiness BUT ABOVE ALL THIS i wish you love" ... and i WILL always love you even if i can't love you in this life. goodbye, spencer.<p>

And even though she didn't believe it, couldn't believe it, would refuse to believe it until she'd seen the ambulance records with her own eyes, she was _there,_ drifting above her limp, lifeless body when the paramedics stormed in and began to perform CPR, with Spencer hovering over her and sobbing her name until they shouted at him to get out of the way.

"Get me two milligrams of IV Narcan, 25 milliliters of Dextrose, and 100 milligrams of Thiamine! Stat!" A syringe pushed into her vein.

"She's breathing again! Start the oxygen!"

Still viewing herself from above like an angel frantically trying to evade being banished to hell: fighting the oxygen mask, using her weak arms to pull it off her face, choking without the artificial air saturating her lungs.

"Restrain her! Her pulse ox is still below 50%!"

Hands gripping her wrists. The oxygen mask placed back on her face even as she tried to shake it off. And, even though her heart was beating again and there was no need for CPR, one trembling palm pressed softly against her heart.

Spencer's palm, pressed softly against her heart.


	20. Rehabilitated

If the first few days in rehab had seemed like a lifetime, what with its strict, mind-numbing roster of therapy sessions, psychiatric evaluations, and far more "Anonymous" meetings than Emily had ever heard of, then twenty-eight days in this place should have felt like an eternity.

But it didn't.

Oh, sure, in the beginning, when she'd whined and pleaded with her counselors that she didn't belong here, that it was all a big misunderstanding, that her problem really wasn't alcohol or drugs or sex at all _- _only to narrow her thick-eyelashed eyes, chagrined, as she listened to one mental health professional after another openly scoff that they'd heard it all before and that, based on extensive reports from her fellow agents as well as her own self-admissions, this was _exactly _where she belonged ... Yes, in the beginning, the realization that she'd have to spend an entire month fighting against the frantic desire to check herself out immediately so she could return to her job, to her team, to her life, had seemed absolutely insufferable.

Admittedly, seeing her colleagues did help with her decision to stay. Well, mostly, hearing Hotch's stern warning that, while he had not yet accepted her letter of resignation, if she signed herself out before completing the mandatory twenty-eight day treatment, he would be forced not only to remove her from the Behavioral Analysis Unit but also to disclose his reasons for withholding a letter of recommendation if she were to apply for any other position under federal jurisdiction ... yes, that particular little ploy had _definitely _helped with her decision to stay.

Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, JJ, Garcia: each visited her at least once a week, bringing books and DVDs and music to help pass the time between groups, all of them bearing anecdotes about the latest cases they'd been assigned, knowing that those stories would serve to kindle the small flame of hope within her that she might one day, against all odds, return to a gratifying future with the BAU.

Reid was the only one who never showed up, never called, never wrote. The only one who never contacted her at all. And when Emily finally dared to inquire about his absence, when she'd grasped Garcia's hands in her own and half-whimpered, "Where's Spencer? Why hasn't he come to see me?", the uneasy expression that crossed Garcia's face as she stammered, "Um, I ... I don't think it's a good idea to ... I mean, I don't think you're ready to ..." told her everything she needed to know.

It told her that Spencer hadn't come to see her because Spencer didn't _want _to see her. And Spencer didn't want to see her because Spencer didn't love her anymore. If he'd ever really loved her at all.

So, on her twenty-second day, sitting in a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting - a part of her schedule that Emily had absolutely refused to abide by until now, mockingly suggesting on more than one occasion that if they really wanted to surround her with a bunch of sex fiends and rapists, they should just reinstate her at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, until she'd finally relented and agreed to go to "just one meeting" - she finally opened up and revealed the truth about Spencer Reid.

After the facilitator, visibly pleased by her presence, passed around an information guide entitled "The Characteristics of Sex and Love Addiction" along with a questionnaire about romantic and sexual behavior to identify potential signs of addiction, Emily scanned the material and found herself raising her hand to speak. Voluntarily. For the first time since she'd arrived.

The stories poured out of her like an unclogged garden hose primed to burst at any moment, beginning with how, during those lonely teenage days stationed overseas with her mother, she'd sought acceptance and validation by participating in unwanted sexual activities with the most popular boys at her academies; how she had first permitted herself to rediscover sex as an expression of love during college, only to have that love forcibly taken from her, resulting in an oath that she'd never, ever, no matter what, open herself up to being hurt like that again; how she'd been specifically chosen for an undercover assignment to seduce an international terrorist because, given her history and psychological profile, her colleagues surmised that she was uniquely capable of succeeding where others would fail; and how, throughout her entire life, she'd engaged in countless promiscuous sexual affairs with both men and women to fill the void inside of her and to provide a sense of human connection, even if only for a short while.

And then Emily's voice cracked as she broke the promise she'd made to herself upon entering this facility, the promise that she'd leave Spencer out of this, and openly wept describing how she had recently permitted someone to shatter the steel covering she'd been building around her heart for more than twenty years and, after he'd accused her as "using" sex as a substitute for love, he showed her how to express, how to feel, how to _believe _in the kind of love she once thought existed solely in movies ... until he abandoned her just like all the others, leaving her hysterically searching for a way to make it stop hurting, to just please God make it stop hurting ...

Following this litany of confessions, Emily paused briefly, wiping the slick river of tears from her cheeks, and raised her head to address the group directly. "My name's Emily," she declared, "and I _am _addicted to alcohol and drugs and sex, but I think I might be addicted to the person I'm in love with, and ... and that's the one thing I can't give up." Her dark eyes stung with fresh tears as she implored, "Please, I'm begging you, please don't tell me I have to give him up, because ..."

"Emily, that's not what recovery from sex and love addiction is about," the facilitator interjected soothingly. "It isn't like alcohol or drug dependence, which requires total abstinence. After all," he continued, his ocean blue eyes scanning hers, "complete emotional and sexual detachment can be equally as destructive as obsessive romantic relationships or promiscuity, as you yourself already know. The goal of recovery is to be involved in healthy, fulfilling relationships instead of using sex as a substitute for love or striving for self-worth exclusively through another person."

"Well, he's in recovery from drug addiction himself, so ..."

Several members of the group groaned audibly.

"No, no! I mean, he's _really _in recovery," Emily clarified, somewhat defensively. "He's been clean for five years. Goes to meetings all the time. So I was going to say that even though I was his first -"

"His first _what?" _a young blond-haired man rumored to have been a member of SEAL Team 6 interjected, brow furrowed.

"His first ... everything," she responded quietly, fixing her eyes on her torn cuticles to avoid the curious stares of the other members. "His first kiss. His first sexual experience ... or experiences, I guess. His first relationship. His first love."

More groaning and sighing, only louder now and accompanied by pitying clucking sounds.

"Why does that _matter?" _Emily shouted angrily, lifting her gaze to challenge the rest of the group. "We _love _each other!"

"Emily, I don't want to minimize the gains you've made today in finally acknowledging your addictions and exposing your vulnerabilities to the rest of the group," the facilitator began gently, "but ..."

"But _what? _But just because _you all _don't know how to have healthy relationships, then, of course, no one else on this planet actually does? Just because _you all _got addicted the first time _you _fell in love, then no one in the entire fucking world can possibly experience a first love that lasts? And just because _you all _have to start from scratch instead of working on fixing an existing, loving relationship, then no one else should be able to, either?" With that, she stood up and began to make her way out of the room.

Before her trembling fingertips touched the doorknob, though, she was stopped cold by one piercing, pointed question.

"Then where is he now, Emily? Where is he now?"

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"Afghanistan."

If stepping out of the carefully-controlled bubble of rehab and into Hotch's black SUV hadn't been enough of a shock to her synapses, this news hit Emily like a nuclear explosion.

"Spencer's in _Afghanistan? _But why? And how? And ... and _why?" _Emily screeched, suddenly hating herself for not pressing her teammates harder for information about Spencer's whereabouts, for choosing to watch mindless reality television instead of CNN, and mostly, hating herself because she knew - she just _knew _- that she was responsible for this.

Hotch kept his eyes trained on the road and responded in a voice so characteristically Hotch, so businesslike and pragmatic it made her want to scream. "After you tried to kill yourself, Reid applied for a temporary transfer to the DEA. They needed someone to assist in a project identifying the unique genetic makeup of cultivated poppy plants throughout the region. If they're successful, then the DEA agents who seize large quantities of heroin here in the United States will, for the first time, be able to trace the drugs to specific areas in the country for targeted eradication."

Emily fell back against the cool leather seat, shaking her head in disbelief as if trying to shake the news from her skull. "But Spenc ... but Reid loves his job. I mean, sure, he sees the same darkness we all see, but he keeps doing it because he knows that, at the end of the day, he's helping to save people's lives."

Without skipping a beat, Hotch turned his weathered face toward Emily and offered pointedly, "Don't you think, Agent Prentiss, that might be precisely _why _he requested a position with the Drug Enforcement Agency in the first place?"

Shamed into silence, Emily smoothed her black hair behind her ears and focused on her breathing to prevent herself from crying. Even though she'd left rehab a walking bundle of raw, exposed nerves, she vowed that, no matter what, she wouldn't permit Hotch the satisfaction of witnessing her vulnerability.

Not now. Not ever again.

And, for once, it turned out that Emily - vow-breaker and liar extraordinaire - was actually quite good at keeping her word.

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Two days after leaving rehab, Emily collected her thirty-day sobriety chip at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Then it was her sixty-day chip while working a case in Wisconsin. And the day she was planning on celebrating ninety days clean and sober at her home group in Washington, DC - the day she walked into the office early with a slight bounce in her step and placed her Starbucks cup on her desk before shaking her brown blazer off her thin shoulders - was the day she paused for a moment to gaze up at the breaking news alert on CNN.

"ATTACK IN AFGHANISTAN: TWO DEA AGENTS BELIEVED TO BE DEAD"

It was the moment the world - the moment _her _world - imploded. This world that Emily had been working her ass off every minute of every day to construct out of the jagged shards of her broken life. This world that was characterized by faithfully attending 12-step meetings and accepting glasses of sparkling cider from Rossi with gratitude even as all of her surrounding colleagues grew tipsy (sometimes obnoxiously so) on wine or liqueur during his dinner parties. This world of clenching her jaw and following Hotch's orders to the very letter so as to prove - to him and to herself - that she really was a team player.

This world where she'd constantly wake up in the middle of the night with her hand pressed hard between her thighs, her hips rocking back and forth, after yet another dream of Spencer's fingers and lips and tongue caressing her body ... only to find herself unable to finish, unable to lose herself in the memories and the fantasies, unable to give herself pleasure when she'd caused him so much pain.

The image on the television began to blur and recede from her vision as one pervasive thought entered her mind. So Emily grabbed her jacket and quickly buttoned it, turning away from her desk, as Wolf Blitzer dramatically intoned behind her, "Right now, the only information we have is that these agents were working on a project to identify species of poppy plants used to manufacture and sell heroin here in the United States. Inside sources reveal that the government is currently engaged in a mission to rescue the existing agents, but they will not reveal either the details of this plan or the identity of the fallen agents."

_I need to get high. Now. _

The urge was so powerful, so all-encompassing, that Emily didn't even notice Garcia standing near the back of the bullpen with one hand over her mouth and her glasses nearly falling off her nose, until she'd nearly crashed into her.

And this gave her pause. _What if Spencer's safe? What if he comes home and I can't tell him I have ninety days sober? What if I can't convince him that we can have a healthy, normal relationship where he doesn't have to worry about me taking off in search of powders and pills every time something goes wrong? _

"Garcia," Emily pleaded, in a voice she almost didn't recognize as her own. "You have to find out. You have to find out if it's him."

"My office. Now," Garcia replied declaratively. "I'm about to do some things that could get me fired and even put in jail, but I don't care. We're going to find Reid. We're going to find out when he's coming home."

Such naïveté, such optimism ... Emily tried to follow her example as she followed her into the upstairs office and watched as she closed the blinds and locked the door behind them, but Emily didn't believe in happy endings. Not anymore.

And Garcia was only moments away from discovering why.


	21. Discovered

Emily was fairly certain that she'd never seen Garcia type this quickly before, watching in awe as her teammate's hot pink fingernails clicked against the keys on her laptop in an almost musical rhythm while she explained in a low voice precisely what she was doing, with (of course) the occasional yet unintentional exclamation of success.

"Okay, so right now? I'm triangulating my IP address so it bounces off several towers in DC ... There! Got it! Now ... hacking into the DEA database ... Hmmm ... Wait, okay. Okay. Okay. I've got something. I've got something!"

Emily's impatient brown eyes stared at the indecipherable lines of encrypted code covering the bright screen, wanting so badly to grill Garcia on what she'd discovered before pushing the words down deep inside of her, taking a deep breath, and reminding herself not to interrupt, not now, not when Garcia was so intently focused on the task at hand. At finding Spencer.

"So it looks like three teams of seven DEA agents entered Afghanistan at the same time with the same mission. Two of those teams were sent to the southern regions of Helmand and Kandahar and the other was sent to the northeastern province of Jalalabad," Garcia reported, her fingers still flying across the keyboard. "And as far as the identification of the agents in each region and the area that was attacked ... Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, shit-pickles."

"What?" Emily whispered desperately, unable to stifle the words bubbling out of her mouth. "Garcia, what?"

"This mission has been so highly classified that I'm going to have to hack into the Pentagon's servers if I want to get any more of the details."

"The _Pentagon?"_ Emily shrieked, quickly covering her mouth with both hands when Garcia glanced anxiously at the door under her bright blue jewel-encrusted glasses and then swiveled around in her seat to look directly at her friend.

After emitting a sigh, Garcia spoke slowly and carefully. "You need to understand that hacking into the Pentagon is more dangerous than anything I've ever done before and by far the most dangerous thing I could ever, ever, ever do. Like, we're talking Gitmo dangerous here. And if you choose to stay in this room? Then you're an accomplice. Do you understand me? I'm not just talking about our careers here, Em. I'm talking about our _lives."_

Suddenly, Emily felt dizzy and had to reach out and seize one of the armrests on Garcia's chair to prevent her knees from buckling. "So you want to stop," she uttered flatly, the sound of her own voice seemingly transformed into a remote buzz in her ears.

"I didn't say that," Garcia replied mischievously, grasping the back of Emily's hand in her palm and squeezing it warmly. "I was asking you if you would like to stay here while I do this or if you would like to go back to your desk and finish up that paperwork from the last case until I either leave this room with an answer or with a pair of handcuffs around my wrists."

Emily shook her head instantly and reflexively. Ever since rehab, she'd been especially conscientious about taking responsibility for her actions and she knew that if she hadn't miraculously run into Garcia at the precise moment she was headed out of the office to potentially ruin her hard-fought ninety days of sobriety, then neither of them would even be in this position in the first place. No, Garcia probably would have waited to ask Hotch or Rossi about Spencer's whereabouts and, if they couldn't provide her with any answers, she would have programmed an international alert into her phone and laptop to receive incoming details released by the news media about the location of the attack and the identity of the two fallen agents. No, if she hadn't witnessed Emily's mournful, terrified eyes glazing over as worst-case scenarios flooded her brain, Penelope Garcia would most certainly not be sitting here in this dimly-lit office plotting exactly how to hack into the Pentagon's database or even thinking about doing something that had long been considered by the United States government to be an act of domestic terrorism.

So no, Emily was going to stay right where she was.

The tension in the air was almost palpable as Garcia chewed on a bleach-blonde strand of hair and turned around to face the computer, murmuring to herself, "Okay, think, you techie nerd goddess. Think. How can you triangulate your IP address so the breach is untraceable? What about North Korea's servers? No ... no ... they'd send a bunch of nukes to Pyongyang courtesy of yours truly within minutes. Maybe ... try bouncing from one US server to another every five seconds? Hmm ... that could work, unless the Pentagon response time is less than five seconds. Which I'd be willing to bet a kiss from Morgan's luscious lips that it is. Oh, wait! I've got it! I've got it! Russia! Press conference, diplomatic negotiations, blah blah blah, but no nukes and enough of a shady history to avert suspicion! Penelope Garcia, you are a beautiful, wonderful, vastly-underappreciated hacker genius."

"You're not under-" Emily started to protest, until Garcia shushed her in response.

"I'm in. I'm in. Holy fuckballs, I'm in. Now ... classified missions abroad involving American DEA agents. Wow, there are a lot. Let's see, how about narrowing the search to Afghanistan and it's border countries? Which are ... um ..."

"Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran," Emily interjected, self-consciously tucking her black hair behind her ears.

"This is why I love you," Garcia called over her shoulder, a grin on her face. "Here we go. Afghanistan. Two active missions ... and one inactive mission?"

"Maybe that's where the DEA agents were killed," Emily murmured, her heartbeat pounding throughout her entire body. "Check that one."

"Done ... and done ... and oh. Oh, my." There was only a moment's pause before Garcia cried out, "Oh, shit; they're tracing me! Or trying to, anyway. I've got to get out of here and wipe this computer _now."_

"But - but did you find out?" Emily implored. "Did you find out about Spencer?"

"Yes, babydoll. Yes. Just give me one minute here ..." Suddenly, the lines of code disappeared from the screen and Emily watched as Garcia quickly switched over to modify the internal settings, where she created a new security lock, reverted to a system restore point prior to hacking into the DEA and Pentagon files, and manually shut down the entire system.

When the surrounding screens turned black, Garcia collapsed for a moment, breathing heavily, as though she'd just completed a triathlon.

And when she finally mustered up the courage to look into Emily's inquisitive eyes, Emily saw a strange mixture of fear, confusion, reluctance and sadness there.

_But not devastation,_ Emily told herself, swallowing hard. _At least not that._

Garcia reached out to clasp both of Emily's sweaty hands in her own cool ones. "I don't really know how to tell you this ... So I'm just going to say it. Spencer's not in Afghanistan."

_Not in Afghanistan?_ Emily's mind reeled as she unsteadily took a step backward, nearly knocking over a pile of papers stacked on the floor behind her. _If he's not in Afghanistan, then where ..._

"He was pulled out of that mission about a month ago and flown back to DC, where he's been assisting the DEA laboratory with identifying the exact location of the specimens they collected overseas but ... But he's been home, Em. He's been home for a whole month." Garcia's lips puckered and she shook her head back and forth ruefully, her bleached hair only partially obscuring the dismayed expression on her face. "I don't know why he didn't tell anyone. I don't know why he didn't tell any of us and I really don't know why he didn't tell you. I'm - I'm so sorry."

Emily forced a smile even though she felt like she was dying inside. "Penelope, you have nothing to be sorry about. I mean, you hacked into the Pentagon database for me! At least Spencer's not dead, right? Even if ..." And, with this thought, the moment at which she couldn't hold the tears back any longer finally arrived. "Even if he wants to be dead to me."

Garcia started to protest, small clucking sounds emanating from her throat, until Emily held up a hand to silence her. "Well, at least now I know what I need to do."

"Oh, yeah? And what's that? Run out of here and get a fix?" Garcia whispered hoarsely, visibly shaken by the idea.

Emily shook her head decisively, the trail of tears that had pooled into a river dripping from her chin drying up as she raised her head and declared emphatically, "No. No, I do not need to get a fix" before throwing open the door facing the BAU bullpen.

"Then what do you need? Then _what?"_ Garcia called out, unable to prevent the traces of concern and fear from creeping into the question she'd tried so hard to utter impartially.

Emily turned around slowly and said in a low, even voice, "I need to find out if Spencer and I can be fixed or if we're just going to be ... to be broken forever."

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It was Emily's good fortune that she didn't run into any of her teammates on the way out of the office or in the parking lot, because she'd made a promise to herself not to lie anymore and yet couldn't quite imagine telling any of them the truth, either. She'd leave that up to Garcia, who would probably invent some story on her behalf and, well, that wasn't really the same as lying, right?

As she drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, Emily was suddenly overcome with gratitude for Penelope Garcia. After all, wasn't she the only one who had supported her relationship with Spencer from the very beginning to the very ... _No, no, don't even think it,_ Emily warned herself sternly. _You don't know if this is the end. So don't you dare walk into Spencer's apartment thinking that. Don't you dare._ To distract herself, she turned her thoughts back to Garcia. To how excited Garcia had been when she'd learned about Emily's first kiss with Spencer. To how she arranged a couple's suite for them in Paris, complete with a sexual goody-box that even Emily found impressive. To how she'd walked in on them in bed together and her genuine delight upon hearing that they were in love.

Were.

After all, maybe the members of that Sex Addicts group had been right. Maybe while Emily knew how to distinguish between love and lust, she'd taken advantage of Spencer's romantic and sexual inexperience to trick him into loving her. Into becoming his new addiction.

As Emily pulled into the parking lot and climbed the stairs to Spencer's apartment, she paused briefly and took a deep breath before knocking. Not the usual authoritative FBI knock that had become so ingrained in her during her time at the BAU, but a timid, almost hesitant knock. A civilian knock.

And before she could prepare herself, before she could give herself a little mental "pep talk," there was Spencer. Standing in front of her with the door flung wide open and a closed, protected, frustratingly unreadable look on his face.

"I just found out that you're back and I have ninety days clean today and I wanted to come by and tell you in person and to thank you for everything you did to help me get here and I ..." Emily had no idea where she was going with this, but Spencer cut her babbling monologue short, stunning her into silence.

Stunning her into silence when he leaned forward, put his arms around her waist, and kissed her.


	22. Reunited

When Emily felt Spencer's lips pressing against her own, her first impulse was to push him away and demand, _how dare you? How_ dare _you kiss me like nothing happened when you disappeared to Afghanistan without telling me when I was in rehab and needed you the most? How dare you kiss me when you came back to DC and permitted a full month to go by without even bothering to let me know you'd returned? How dare you kiss me when ... when ..._

... when it felt so good.

And now, as all rational thought slipped away, she stopped being Emily Prentiss, FBI agent, and became just a woman fervently in love with the man she had missed and longed for and dreamed about during these past few empty, lonely months without him.

In other words, the Emily he'd fallen in love with - before the drugs, before the betrayals, before the complications ... before there were so many goddamn complications ...

But nothing felt complicated about this.

Spencer's hands were everywhere as he kissed her: pushing gently against her back to draw her closer to him, running through the tangles of her black hair and massaging her scalp, stroking her arms so lightly she shivered with goosebumps, and tracing the curves of her body from her hips to her ribs over and over again as he opened his mouth against hers and teased her with the tip of his warm, wet tongue.

And the moment that Emily simultaneously heard and felt the lustful groan vibrating from within Spencer's body was also the moment that she finally stopped wondering if this was some sort of cruel trick he was playing on her and fully gave herself over to her desire for him, deep and hidden and suppressed for so long now, desire that seemed to emanate throughout her entire being.

She opened her mouth and began to let out an involuntary moan, interrupted by the sound of a door opening at the end of the hallway and a judgmental "Uh-_huh_" from an elderly woman who, when Emily spun around to look, was watching them from the doorway, her arms crossed over her flannel nightdress and her head shaking back and forth in dismay, a clear expression of disapproval written all over her face.

"Maybe we should go inside," Spencer whispered hopefully.

Emily paused for just a moment to relish his uncertainty before leaning forward and sucking on his lower lip. "Maybe we should," she agreed, watching in amazement as his anxiety transformed into relief, as though she had been the one avoiding him all this time and not the other way around.

They walked into his apartment, Spencer closing the door behind them, and continued where they'd left off: kissing like teenagers as they backed into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the bed, their lips never parting, not even for a moment.

Emily finally broke away from his full, soft, _addictive_ mouth and scooted up toward the headboard, kicking off her shoes and motioning for him to join her.

Despite her fears, there was no hesitation. No doubt. There was just Spencer, leaning over her and placing his trembling hand on the right side of her stomach to ease her down onto the pillow below.

He was fully in control and for the first time in her life, Emily didn't fight it. Didn't question it. Didn't mind it. In fact ... In fact ... In fact, she actually _liked_ it. Because it was Spencer. Only because it was Spencer. And only because she loved him more than she'd ever loved anyone in her life.

To her surprise, Spencer climbed on top of her, lowering his body and slowly moving it up and down against hers so she could feel his arousal, so she could raise her hips slightly to meet every delicate thrust, as their mouths opened and their tongues twisted together simultaneously in perfect rhythm.

"Mmmmm," Emily half-whimpered, spreading her thighs into a butterfly position as she felt the familiar wetness pooling in her panties.

"Can I ... Um, can I take your shirt off?" Spencer asked quietly, his brown eyes scanning her upper body.

"Will you take yours off, too?" she replied demurely and, when he nodded his agreement, an immediate, throaty "yes" escaped her.

He pulled his T-shirt off first, allowing her a moment to glance at his chest. It was brazenly obvious that he'd been working out. _Spencer hates working out,_ Emily thought, suddenly conflicted for the first time since she'd walked in the door. But then he was grasping onto the bottom of her black tailored shirt, raising it above her head while she sat up to wriggle her arms free, and all of those doubts dissipated in the air like smoke.

He didn't remove her bra, just laid on top of her with the bare flesh of his stomach rubbing against hers as he kissed her neck and sucked on her earlobes, grinding against her so slowly that she couldn't prevent herself from wrapping her legs around him and sighing in relief as he managed to hit the perfect angle, in direct contact with her now-throbbing clit.

"My ... my bra ..." she managed to stutter, reaching behind her back to unhook it and toss it aside.

"I almost forgot -" Spencer started to say, before stopping mid-sentence and turning away to avoid her dark long-lashed eyes.

"You almost forgot what?" Emily asked curiously.

"I almost forgot ... how beautiful you are," he replied softly, his gaze still fixed on the carpet next to the bed.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. Instead, she took his face in her hands and stared directly at him, at the blush of embarrassment creeping onto his face. "I didn't," she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. "I didn't forget how beautiful you are, not for one second."

His blush reddened and she leaned up to blow softly on his neck while placing her hands on his chest, rubbing circles around his pectoral muscles, occasionally allowing one fingertip to stray directly over each nipple as it hardened in response to her touch. "Beautiful," she repeated emphatically.

The word - or perhaps the reassurance associated with the word - boosted his confidence, because now it was his fingertips kneading her nipples, pulling on them until she cried out in pleasure and then, when he glanced at her face, alarmed that perhaps that he had hurt her and uncertain as to whether he should continue, Emily nodded her assent vigorously, moaning, "That feels incredible."

And then it was no longer Spencer's exquisite hands but his equally-talented mouth licking and sucking on her breasts, holding one of her nipples gently between his teeth and flicking his tongue against it while he cupped the other breast in his palm and traced light rhythms back and forth across her bare stomach with his fingers, directly above the infuriating barrier of her pants.

"I want to ..." she choked out hoarsely, "I want to be closer ..."

Typically, this didn't even begin to resemble what Emily would say. No, typically, she'd purr, "I want to feel your hard cock rubbing against my hot, wet pussy." But there was nothing typical about this. There was nothing typical about him, nothing typical about _them_.

Spencer sat up and unbuttoned her pants, leaning back and letting her unzip them and hastily slide them off while he self-consciously removed his own. To her chagrin, he remained in his underwear. But when she saw the outline of his cock straining against his gray briefs, droplets of pre-come leaving a visible wet spot at the tip, she breathed out an "ohhhhh" of delight.

And then he was slowly moving against her in measured strokes, leaving gentle and occasional kisses against her tingling mouth but mostly just staring into her eyes. Emily tried to keep hers open, tried to communicate everything she couldn't say in words - words like "I love you," words like "I want to be with you forever," words like "please don't ever leave me again" - but his hips accelerated and it felt so much like they were making love even though he wasn't actually inside of her that she had to force them closed as her body started to shudder, for the first time since Paris, the orgasm building and building and building and ...

Stopping.

"No, no, no, don't stop, please don't stop ... I was so close ... I haven't been able to ... Not since Paris, not since you ... Oh god Spencer please don't stop ..." she begged.

Unfortunately, her admission that she hadn't been able to have an orgasm since the last time she was with him prompted him to sit up, the dichotomy between his engorged, visibly-throbbing cock and his rational, conversational tone both mystifying and infuriating her at the same time.

"Wait, you haven't ... You don't ..." The blush returned to his cheeks as he tried and failed to get the words out.

And although her galloping, amphetamine-like heartbeat and her rapid inhalations and exhalations inhibited any semblance of normal speech, she managed to utter the words he was too embarrassed to say out loud. "No. I don't - I can't - come - anymore. I wake up - and I'm dreaming - of you and me - and I'm so wet - so close - and I want it - want it so much - but I can't - can't finish."

"And you haven't ..." Spencer gulped hard, clearly apprehensive of hearing the answer to his next question. "You haven't been with anyone else since me?"

"No!" she exclaimed instantly, shaking her head back and forth like she was trying to shake the very idea from her head. And then her heart sank as it occurred to her. As it occurred to her why Spencer might be so surprised that he was the last person she'd been with in months.

Shifting away from him and covering her breasts with crossed arms, Emily repeated the question he'd just asked her, although she couldn't compel herself to use the same non-judgmental tone that he had. The words that escaped from her red lips were angry, accusing, hurt. "Have _you_ been with anyone else since me?"

There was no response.

Tears instantly stung her eyes, dripping down her face like a broken faucet, and she turned her head away, unable to look at him for one more second.

"Wait, Emily ... Wait, you weren't ..." Spencer sputtered, reaching out to caress her cheek and quickly withdrawing his hand when she flinched like an abused animal.

"I wasn't _what_, Spencer?" she hissed.

"You weren't serious, were you?" he replied incredulously.

Emily turned back toward him, meeting his concerned eyes through the blur of tears she somehow couldn't manage to suppress. "Of course I was serious!" she cried out. "I mean, why else would you make Hotch wait to tell me that you left the BAU to go to fucking Afghanistan when I was in rehab? Why else would I have to discover that you've been home for an entire fucking month by getting Garcia to hack into the Pentagon database? Why else ..."

"Wait a minute, Garcia _hacked into the Pentagon database?_" he interrupted in amazement.

"Not the point, Spencer," Emily uttered through gritted teeth. "Why else would you be so surprised that I haven't been with anyone else since you, that I haven't even been able to masturbate since the last time we were together? Why else, unless you were just using me to teach you how to fuck so you could go find some beautiful genius to show off all your new skills? Why else, Spencer? Why else?"

"Because ... because I didn't think I was the only one," he answered hesitantly.

"Well, you were. So thanks for the trip down memory lane, but I'm going to grab my clothes and -"

"No, no, Emily, wait! That's not what I meant!" Spencer shouted, reaching out to grip her arm and forcing her to pause for just a moment as a torrent of words poured out of him. "I didn't think I was the only one who couldn't ... who couldn't touch myself without thinking about you. I didn't think I was the only one who couldn't imagine ever being with anyone else but you. And I didn't tell you because I was scared. Scared that after you got clean you'd regret everything that happened between us in Paris, scared that you wouldn't want me anymore, scared that maybe somehow I contributed to it - but most of all? I was scared that you'd see me as just another person you'd slept with and I ... I couldn't face that. I couldn't be that, Emily."

"Oh, Spencer," she whispered, the tears streaking her face for an entirely different reason now. "You weren't that. You were never that. You were - you are - everything."

"'What's the sense of trying hard to find your dreams? Without someone to share it with, tell me what does it mean?'" Spencer sang, lifting her heart because he was quoting her movie. _Their _movie. Only in the end of _The Bodyguard_ ...

And as though he could read her mind, he put his arms around her, resting his head lightly on her shoulder and murmured, "That's not how our movie's going to end, Emily."

Emily wanted so badly to believe him, but after everything they'd been through, after all of the 'fix-it's of the past and the 'fix-it's that would inevitably arise in the future, how could she? How could he convince her that ...

"'I have nothing if I don't have you'," he half-sang, half-sighed into her earlobe. "I know it's a song lyric, but I mean it. These past few months away from you have proven that to me. I love you so much it hurts. And it shouldn't hurt, Emily. _We_ shouldn't hurt. And if being with me hurts you, then I'll leave you alone. Because all I want is for you to be happy. Even if it hurts. Even if you can't be happy with me."

"Spencer," Emily said softly but emphatically, "I've thought a lot about us since we've been apart, too. And you know what I realized? I realized that I can't imagine being happy _without_ you."

She put her arms around him and clutched onto him for dear life.

For life.


	23. Finished

"I don't want to fu-," Emily murmured into Spencer's messy light brown hair when he began kissing her neck and shoulders, before catching herself. "I mean, I don't want to make love."

He reacted immediately, trying to blink away the puppy-dog expression of hurt shadowing his face. "I understand," he managed to utter as he started to withdraw the arm draped around Emily's shoulders, shifting his body to move toward the opposite side of the bed.

"No, you don't," she insisted, deftly grabbing his tanned arm and wrapping her fingers around it to place it back where it had been resting. Her eyes reflected a kind of genuine, loving thoughtfulness that Spencer was fairly sure he hadn't ever seen in her before, except when she was working a case at the BAU. Scanning through his memories of her face during the brief time they'd been together, he remembered seeing lust - he remembered seeing a _lot_ of lust - and he remembered seeing infatuation and he even remembered seeing love, but not like this. No, definitely not like this.

"I'm so turned on right now, Spencer," Emily admitted, her eyes leaving his for a moment as she reached down to cover herself with his light blue blanket, "but I want to talk before we ... before we do anything else. If we do anything else. We need to talk before ..."

She allowed her sentence to trail off, raising her gaze to glance at him uncomfortably. "I know I love you. And I - I want to believe that you feel the same way about me. But if I had been sent to Afghanistan? I would have called you the very second I came back." She breathed out a ragged sigh. "Spencer, if we're going to be together ... If you want to be together ... I need it to be something more than 'you and me'. I need it to be 'us'."

"I already told you why I didn't contact you after I returned from Afghanistan," Spencer reminded her gently. "But honestly? It was more than just that. When we were in Paris, a lot of the time ... Well, a lot of the time it didn't feel like I thought love _should_ feel."

It was Emily's turn to flinch now. "Ouch," she mumbled, biting down hard on her lower lip.

"What I mean is," he struggled to explain, "a lot of the time, it felt compulsive. It felt addictive. Remember when I told you, 'Let me be your OxyContin'?"

Despite herself, an involuntary grin appeared on Emily's face. "Of course I remember. It was on the plane after we'd flushed all of those pills. The first time we were ... together."

"But see ... The thing is, there were times in Paris when I _did_ feel like I'd become your OxyContin. When I felt like you were ... using me ... or using sex with me ... as a substitute for drugs. I mean, weren't you? Regardless of how you felt about me, weren't you? At least some of the time? Weren't you?"

Emily suddenly froze, still as a statue, as the words she'd heard at that Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting floated back to her like dandelion fragments in the wind.

Finally, after a prolonged, uncertain silence, she spoke. "You're partially right," she admitted, chewing on one of her cuticles. "But not about using you as a substitute for drugs. I guess, at the time, I wanted to be ... to be your substitute for drugs. Because I didn't think you'd love me any other way. Even though you said you felt closer to me before we started having sex, even though you told me your feelings for me had nothing to do with sex, that they went beyond sex, I didn't believe it. I didn't know how to believe it, because ... because I didn't know how it was possible for anyone to love me unless ... unless ..."

The tears came without warning, and she covered her face with both hands to conceal them. "I really fucked up, didn't I?" she half-sobbed. "I took something that could have been so incredible and I ... I ruined it. Just like I always do. Just like I always have."

Spencer began to stroke her hair soothingly and, in a soft, reassuring voice, murmured, "You didn't ruin anything, Emily. You fixed it."

Hopefully, warily, she lowered her hands to look at him. "I did?"

"And it's not even Friday night," he joked, smiling at her with such love that she couldn't help but return it, tears dripping anew from her eyes, because this was such a different feeling, such a different experience, such a different conversation, than anything she'd ever had or known in the past.

"But Spencer ... If you really felt that way, then why didn't you sit me down and talk to me about it before you kissed me in the hallway? Why did you let it reach the point of almost having sex if you thought I was using it - if you thought I was using you - as some kind of substitute for drugs?" she blurted out, confused.

He exhaled deeply. "I ... I don't know. I've spent the last month obsessing over what I'd say to you when I finally saw you, but when I opened the door and found you standing there in that hallway ... I'd just been trying to, um, trying to pleasure myself and I - I couldn't finish. Like every other time. So there you were, and I - I couldn't think rationally. And when my brain finally caught up with, um, with the rest of me, I was afraid you'd think I was rejecting you if I stopped."

Emily nodded slowly, processing his answer, before she spoke again. "What do you want from me, Spencer? What do you want from us? And, most of all, what do you want _for_ us?"

Her directness took him by surprise, which was her intention. She didn't want him to have time to contemplate the question and come up with a rehearsed answer, an answer that came from his brain rather than from his heart.

"I ... I ..." Spencer stuttered. "I ... want to be with you. The you I fell in love with when I held you close after the explosion at that compound. The you that took my hands in yours on the plane later and assured me that it wasn't my fault Cyrus had beaten you, that you had made a choice and that you'd make it again. The you I see here in front of me now, without all of the drugs and the insecurities and the attempts to use sex as a way to manipulate me into loving you." His eyes were shining as he gave a voice to the words that had been circulating throughout his consciousness for the past three months, words he never thought he'd have a chance to say out loud.

"And congratulations on your three months of sobriety, by the way" he added, lightly kissing her on the cheek.

Emily jerked abruptly, startled by the seemingly-electric touch of his lips - and by the fact that he knew today was her 90 day anniversary.

"Well, you told me when I answered the door, but I've been counting, too," Spencer said, grinning boyishly.

"But how did you know I didn't ... how did you know I wouldn't ..." she sputtered incoherently.

"Because I know you, Emily Prentiss," he whispered, raising his torso slightly off the bed so he could place his mouth against hers. "Because I trust you. Because I ... because I love you. Because I love you so much I had to believe that you'd choose me. That you'd choose a life with me over ... over the life you had in Paris."

"I do," Emily declared emphatically, closing her eyes blissfully as Spencer interrupted each sentence with a kiss. "I do choose you. I've already decided to take a position I was offered. With Homeland Security. Resign from the BAU. So we can be together."

At that, Spencer pulled away, visibly shocked. "Really?" he asked, disbelief creeping into his voice. "Are you ... but you love working there ..."

Emily shook her head ruefully. "No, Spencer. I _used_ to love working there. Before Ian Doyle resurfaced. Before they sent me away to Paris. I've had offers from Interpol, which I've declined, but when something opened up at the DC branch of Homeland Security, it just ... Well, it just made sense. It just makes sense." She took her free hand and rubbed it across his stomach, back and forth and back and forth, kissing him with sudden, unexpected intensity. "Like how we make sense," she exhaled, carefully watching the reaction on his face.

When Spencer looked into her dark dilated pupils and felt his cock twitch and harden to the point that, if not for the confines of his boxer shorts, it would have brushed against her hand, he groaned in ecstasy. Three months without an orgasm, aside from the times he'd woken up with his underwear and the bedsheets soaked after a wet dream about her, something that hadn't happened to him since he was a young teenager. Three months without it. Three months without Emily.

She climbed on top of him, deftly using the headboard as leverage for her hands, and slowly - oh, god, ever so slowly - moved against him, arching her back like a cat to stimulate her clit as she continued her dry-humping. She was close ... she was closer ... she was about to ...

Feel Spencer's strong arms grasping her waist as he gently but firmly guided her off of him, onto the pillow where she'd previously been resting.

A flash of wounded rejection crossed her face for a moment before she panted, "I'm sorry. It's OK. If you don't - don't want to. It's OK."

"No, I want to," he insisted, blushing in advance at the confession he was about to make. "But over the past three months, I've had these dreams ... and I wake up to a huge mess ... and all the dreams were about the time I watched you. .. watched you touch yourself. The time you said it was 'just you being you'. Except, in the dreams, I was ... I was the one touching you like that. So can I? Can I touch you like that?"

Emily wriggled out of her panties and spread her legs before Spencer could even finish his last sentence. "The only thing is ... what if I can't anymore?" she wondered aloud, biting down on her lip in concern. "What if I can't ... let go anymore?"

"I won't love you any less, Emily. I won't _want_ you any less," he replied, stroking her cheek. "Don't you remember Paris? Don't you remember how many times we had to try before I was ready? If you need time, we have all the time in the world. And I want you to be ready when it happens. I don't want to force you there if you're not. If you say the safe word - do you still remember it? - I'll stop. No questions asked."

"I remember the safe word," she acknowledged, not wanting to utter it out loud, lest she poison the moment by ruminating about how she'd decided earlier to disappear from work unannounced, purposefully leaving her cell phone downstairs in her parked car so Hotch couldn't reach her.

And then those thoughts faded away as Spencer placed his finger on her clit, rubbing in quick, even circles, but she was so wet by now that he couldn't keep a steady rhythm.

"Wait a minute," he said, leaning down between her legs to lick and suck the excess fluid away, swallowing several times, relishing that exquisite, tangy taste he'd missed so much, barely even hearing Emily's sharp intake of breath as she squirmed against him. Moments later, when he was finished, Spencer kissed her, their tongues intertwining so she could taste herself there, and pressed his groin into her side so she could feel his impossible hardness, so she could feel the warmth of the sticky pre-come staining his boxer shorts.

It took all of his resolve not to beg her to please let him put it inside of her or even ask her just to place her hand there, to offer him the quick, sweet release his body craved. Instead, he shifted away and placed his finger back on her clit, stroking it at the same rapid, furious pace he'd once watched her use on herself.

"Mmmmhhhh ... ohhhhhhh ... mmmmmhhhh," Emily moaned incoherently, lifting her hips erratically to meet the pressure of Spencer's finger against her. She tried to force her eyes to stay open but she couldn't: it felt so fucking amazing, like Spencer's finger was engaged in a winning chess match against her body, while she rode that feeling closer and closer and he increased his speed almost intuitively ... It was ... she was ...

"I'm coming!" she cried out before her body exploded beneath her, shuddering as wave upon wave of pleasure flowed through her, bringing her to a place outside of herself where there was no sound, no vision, save for the image of Spencer's face, brow furrowed in concentration, as his finger pounded against her clit.

And then, ears ringing and eyes blurring, she returned to herself, pushing Spencer's hand away when the sensation became too much. "Oh my God," she gasped, her jet-black hair splayed across the pillow underneath her head as the ceiling came into focus. "Oh my God."

Her eyes stung with tears as Spencer leaned forward to kiss her. "Thank you," she managed to utter. "Thank you."

"No, thank _you_," he responded, caressing her shoulder.

"Wait, you're thanking me? For what?" Emily asked, confused.

"For trusting me."

"Oh, Spencer ..." she sighed lovingly, kissing his collarbone and his cheeks and his mouth. Kissing and kissing and kissing his mouth.

"I want to be inside of you," he growled in response, maneuvering himself so he was on top of her, sliding against her slick wetness. The pressure in his cock, the need for release, was by now almost unbearable.

Emily froze, clenching her legs together to prevent him from entering her. "I'm not on birth control anymore," she uttered aloud, for the first time remembering something that she'd taken for granted since she was sixteen years old.

"That's OK," Spencer murmured into her neck.

"No, Spencer ... Wait. No. No, it's not OK. Even if you pull out, there's a chance I could get pregnant. And I won't - I _can't_ - go through another abortion. Especially not if it's ... if it's yours." Her eyes filled with tears, both at the memory and at the possibility. "Do you have any condoms? Because then we don't have to -"

"That's not what I meant," he interrupted. "I meant ... I'm happy you're not on birth control anymore. I'm happy because ..."

It was then that the implication behind his words hit her like a ton of bricks. "Baby geniuses?" Emily asked incredulously.

Spencer nodded, his face lighting up. "I've thought about this a lot over the last three months and I really want to try. Do you ... do you want to try, too?" When she didn't answer immediately, he added, defeated, "I can go buy some condoms now. Or we can get the morning-after pill."

"No," she said, shaking her head and smiling shyly at him. "Let's try. I want to try."

"Really?"

"Really."

He climbed on top of her, kissing her lips as he slowly eased himself inside of her, eyes rolling back in his head and short moans of pleasure escaping his lungs at the very moment he felt her tight wetness gripping him. Spencer knew instantly that this - that _he_ - wasn't going to last very long.

"Let yourself go," Emily encouraged him, her fingers pressing against his lower back as he fought against the overwhelming need to come, as he continued slowly thrusting his cock in and out of her. "Let yourself go and fuck me like you really want to."

"But I - I -" he gulped, her words sending a small shudder throughout his body, "but I -"

"Do it, Spencer," she demanded, squeezing her inner muscles against him. "Fuck me. Fuck me hard. I want you to."

So, with her explicit permission, he did. Rammed himself into her so deep he could feel that spongy area inside of her pressing against the base of his cock and, fueled by the memory of the time when her hot liquid gushed all over him, he leaned his head back and howled as the first throb of his long-delayed orgasm roared through him: bursts of seemingly endless spurts of come firing through and out of his body again and again and again and again until there wasn't any left and yet he was still coming, six or seven or maybe even eight dry pulses until his cock finally softened and he collapsed on top of her with an incoherent "unnnnnhhhhhh" of absolute ecstasy.

Emily kissed his neck and his shoulders, whispering soft "mmmmmmm"s into his ear while her fingertips stroked his back. "I'm going to be masturbating to that for a long time," she half-giggled.

Still, Spencer couldn't help but feel disappointed in himself, like he'd let her - and himself - down. After all, they'd been together enough times by now that he should have been able to control himself, should have been able to wait for her pleasure, should have lasted so much longer than the mere thirty to forty-five seconds it took before his massive release. Morgan's oft-repeated term about "blowing your load" seemed to take on an entirely new meaning in this context.

But Emily's breathy excitement invaded his self-conscious ruminations. "It was like ... like I could feel how desperately you wanted it. How desperately you needed it. And then you were hitting that spot and it felt so good and oh, god, Spencer, after the first throb, when your hot come was just ... just _filling_ me ... so much come ... and you were having these multiple orgasms, coming even when you had nothing left to shoot into me ... You have no idea how much it turned me on ... how much it turns me on ..."

The insecurities plaguing him only moments earlier began to dissipate. After all, he was not the same Spencer Reid of three months ago or even a year ago, not the same twenty-nine year old virgin she'd slept with in Paris, and he was certainly not the same pathetically love-sick boy so intimidated by the seemingly-unobtainable Emily Prentiss that it took overhearing her confession to Garcia in the men's locker room at the BAU to provide him with the courage to act on his attraction. No, he knew her now - knew her inside and out - and the lessons he'd learned from her had remained with him.

With renewed confidence, Spencer sat up between Emily's knees, adeptly pulling her into a half-sitting position, and inserted two fingers inside of her, rubbing slowly against that soft, spongy area directly above her pubic bone until he felt it begin to expand and toughen underneath his fingertips.

"Ohhhhhh shit ..." Emily breathed out, clamping her inner walls so there was barely any room to move. He switched tactics: pummeling the area with the rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of a machine gun, watching her face eagerly as she swallowed hard and closed her eyes, spreading her legs wider, until his hand was covered with one brief squirt of hot liquid. The noises escaping her throat were incoherent and yet - _why does she still fight against fully letting herself go?_ - another minute passed by until she couldn't take it anymore, until the prolonged pleasure became too much, until she gave into it, crying out "yes! oh, god, yes!" only moments before the warm, wet gush of fluid poured out from inside of her, soaking Spencer's hand and his wrist and the bedsheets below.

When he felt the area begin to deflate like an emptied water balloon, he gently stroked it several times in that same "come here" motion he'd seemed to have perfected, prompting several additional, erratic squirts, and when Emily's legs began to tremble, signaling that her orgasm was over, he withdrew his fingers and placed them in his mouth, savoring her sweet, tangy taste.

Spencer glanced down at his lover and noticed the tears streaming down her face. At first, he reacted with alarm, hoping he hadn't pushed her too far, hoping she wasn't reliving the first time she'd experienced this - the time Ian Doyle had raped and humiliated her - but then he remembered her explanation of how G-spot orgasms were different than clitoral orgasms: how they were deeper, stronger, more emotionally intense. So he carefully crawled to his side of the bed, slid the blanket up to conceal his seemingly-inappropriate erection, and pulled Emily close to him, wrapping his arm around her waist while her head rested on his chest, right above his accelerated heartbeat. He kissed her forehead and petted her hair and waited anxiously for her to break the silence.

"You know what I love?" she eventually sniffled, linking the arm she'd draped over his chest in between his shoulder and the pillow underneath him.

"What do you love?" Spencer replied softly, quietly.

"How safe I feel when I'm with you. How ... how it's like I've spent my whole life running away from my past, and, when I'm with you, I just ... I just don't need to run anymore. I don't even need to look behind me." Emily raised her head, her dark eyes bright and serious. "The only place I need to look is right in front of me. Right here with me."

"I feel the same way," Spencer told her, shaking his light brown hair out of his eyes. "Do you remember, in the beginning, how scared I was? Even to let you touch me?"

She nodded.

"I'm not scared anymore. I want to spend the rest of my life with you." The words left his lips without the slightest hesitation. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me, too? Will you marry me, Emily Prentiss?"

Her jaw dropped. "Are you joking?"

Spencer shook his head firmly. "Do I look like I'm joking?"

Emily laughed, gleeful, and planted kisses all over both of his cheeks before responding, "Yes! Oh, Spencer ... Yes!"

She climbed on top of him, straddling him, and placed her mouth against his, kissing him ferociously. Their tongues met and, Spencer realized, the impact of those kisses hadn't diminished with time. It was still like the first time, every time.

His hands were cupping her breasts as they started to move together, and when Emily tossed her head back to let out an exhilarated moan, he began to lick circles around one of her nipples, finally taking it into his mouth and sucking on it, holding it gently between his teeth and pulling before releasing it and switching his attention to her other breast. "I wish I had more than one mouth," he sighed, flicking her hardened nipple with his tongue.

"I think you do perfectly well with just one," Emily replied, her eyes gleaming. She managed to squirm out of his embrace and toss the blanket covering Spencer's abdomen on the floor, revealing his visible arousal. Wordlessly, she gripped him in her right hand and slowly stroked him up and down, while her other hand carefully caressed his balls and traced the ever-prominent vein on the underside of his cock and her tongue snaked around his tip, occasionally darting inside of it. Her efforts were rewarded by small, almost anguished cries and the taste of his copious pre-come mixed in with her saliva.

Emily paused and inched her body upward, her wet, slick folds only centimeters away from his hard prick. "Tell me ... Tell me that you want to fuck your wife," she moaned.

"I want to fuck my wife," Spencer repeated, sighing in pleasure as she slowly lowered herself down onto him.

One of her fingers was on her clit, rubbing circles at full speed, as she thrust herself against him. "Again," Emily choked out. "Say it again."

"I was at work all day," Spencer improvised, "and all I could think about was coming home to fuck you. To fuck my wife."

"Y-yes," she gasped.

This was so different than any of their earlier role-plays. Emily had never permitted him, much less _invited_ him, to be the dominant one. "Were you wet for me all day? Did you make yourself wait for your husband like I asked you to?"

"I did," she groaned, her finger moving even more rapidly against her clit. "I made myself wait for ... for my husband ... Ohhhh, god ... I waited all day for my husband to finally get home and fuck me ..."

Emily was so close. Spencer knew the signs by now and, on the brink of coming himself, barely managed to murmur, "My wife ... Come for me, my beautiful, beautiful wife ... "

His words triggered her orgasm, her inner walls clenching and releasing against him as her eyes rolled up to the ceiling, the sensation prompting his own release and, as he spilled himself into her again and again, Emily came a second time, shuddering almost painfully while she cried out, "Oh, god, my Spencer ... my husband ..."

After collapsing next to him and smothering him with kisses, Emily met Spencer's eyes and asked, without a trace of doubt in her voice, "So when are we going to have the wedding?"

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Three months later, at Rossi's house, the entire team gathered to celebrate the union of two of their own. Emily's mother, to her chagrin, had opted not to join them, her last words to her daughter a sneering, "Well, I hope you realize what you're doing in giving up a promising career path for some guy who will probably end up leaving you." Spencer had spent days consoling her, and yet as Emily surveyed the small crowd gathered in Rossi's backyard, she still felt a small sting of pain knowing that her own mother wasn't there to celebrate with her on this crucial day.

But one guest's attendance took them both by surprise: Diana Reid. She'd managed to convince the hospital to fly her out to DC with one of her aides so she could witness her son's nuptials. Emily approached her with trepidation, cordially thanking her for taking the time to be there with them.

Diana glowered at her aide and, in a stage-whisper, remarked, "I just wish they hadn't sent me with this fascist. No appreciation for culture. Unlike you, Emily, isn't that right?"

"Yes, ma'am," she responded.

"Now listen to me," Diana said sternly, placing one hand on Emily's abdomen. "I want you to make sure she doesn't end up like those pigs they have me surrounded with in that prison. It's never too early to begin with the classics. I'd start with Camus or Voltaire myself. You can even start reading to her now."

Shocked, Emily inadvertently stepped away. She and Spencer had decided not to reveal the pregnancy to anyone yet, since Emily was barely showing, and it was certainly too early for the doctors to determine the baby's gender. "How ... how did you know? And how do you know it's going to be a 'she'?" she asked incredulously.

Diana merely winked at her, visibly pleased by Emily's surprised reaction. "I've said it before: a mother knows. You'll find that out soon enough."

The wedding itself progressed like a dream: rings exchanged as the couple repeated their vows after the pastor, gorging themselves on Rossi's home-cooked buffet, and dancing to the song "I Will Always Love You" before the rest joined in, each team member offering sincere congratulations and well-wishes for the future.

And after the gifts had been collected and the guests thanked, Spencer and Emily drove to their new home in the suburbs and made love as husband and wife, with no role-playing required.

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Eight months later, Emily held her beautiful baby girl in her arms as Spencer looked on adoringly.

They named her in honor of how they'd first come together as a couple, in memory of all the 'fix-it's that had transpired, and in celebration of leaving their old lives behind so they could embark upon this new one together.

They named her Paris. 


End file.
